Some mornings I do wake up grumpy. That is not normal for me, since I am what you could call a morning person. You know the type that can drive others crazy by my smile and chipper ‘good morning pilgrim’ kind of corny thing. However there are mornings when I just want to stay there until my grumpiness goes away. So I get up, have some coffee, caffeine does help a bit and start my day just as other ‘grumpy’ people do. I am just glad that I only visit that group rarely. However I have come to respect them having to go through that every morning. On the other side of the coin, perhaps some non-morning-people do have a happy waking up…I wonder if they become more understanding of the more-chipper-than-thou kind of behavior, or if they get even more resentful because they are shown another way but must go back to the shadows.
Of course there is another side to being a morning person. By evening my chipper-than-thou-attitude is barely putting one foot in front of the others, and the evening people are winding up for an evening of ‘doing-stuff’. By 8PM I am cross eyed with fatigue and here they are laughing, smiling and looking down on a person cut off from the stream of life. Well that is OK, for I can sleep and in the morning I will look at them and say “good morning pilgrim” with a special big smile in the bargain! It all balances out I guess. In the end I world rather stay a morning person. I would rather jump out of bed when I wake up than be poured out like slow running molasses.
Choose
I reach out when all seems lost,
or when I am just being my myself;
shallow,
unstable in rebellion,
stubborn in my embrace of sand and dust,
yet I reach out,
because it is love that reaches for me
When this truth hits home,
do not allow doubt to draw you away,
for grace is at work,
powerfully,
in a hidden way.
Choose.
Faith is not weak,
nor is it fantasy,
for infinite love cannot be constrained,
yet we must choose,
for in the end
that is what love is all about.
Br. Mark Dohle, OCSO
Holy Spirit Monastery
