Howdy,
Saturday morning I saw sunrise through our slider.
Its colors and light pulled me out quickly as I could pull my shoes on.
Thoughts of planning a post for Sunday, I contemplated writing and describing the sunrise, any sunrise. Half wondering why I’d ever even dare to write at all about anything (look at the artful creations each morning! Why would my words, my voice, be needed in this world or anywhere?) and half wondering how.
Fully committed and fully human.
How to describe a palette of such radiating beauty? A natural one with fresh light and cotton candy pink and blue. While cotton candy amazes in the sky, it’s cliched in phrase. I want to do more than spin sugar. How about picturing the lit expanse with western cotton candy melting east as background glue to striking bolts of transparent orange stickered to the sky?
I gave it a try.
As far as why’d I’d ever even dare, I’m made in God’s image.
God is Creator.
Look at the sky. Look at the heavens. “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims His handiwork” (Psalm 19:1).
God created us creators.
If I were God, my written description of a sunrise would be the rising of the sun itself. Clearly I’m not. Not a news flash. We work in image, dim, layered in fog, but as shadows outfitted as reflectors; to be lit with His light, reflecting His glory. That’s glorious.
The sunrise may be only God’s toenail. Though its hints are deep.
God creates daily to display.
For me, part of daily writing is practicing craft, a striving and service to myself and others to better capture all available to us in art, beauty, and communication; and part’s honing voice since God’s given us one, a desire to use it, a responsibility to speak. Another part, to publish.
The light drew me out, but the morning’s ground fog promised rescue from the must of a deep-prism description of masterful sky.
Plus I clicked pictures of the clinging, hovering, harmless fog. To hedge, to cheat.
These pictures aren’t even of the sunrise sky: I didn’t trust the camera to capture it. Yet still it’s beautiful. Makes me wish I’d turned to snap the eastern orange.
Starting a walk gazing up, I caught a glance of blurred white through cast iron gates. The grass pit (park?) across the street pocketed morning moisture for a total mood setter. Fall. Cool. Damp. Fresh. Layers with color behind. Hues sneaking through, diffused.
I’d write about the fog. Why not? We don’t get it around here like we used to, back in the dangerous days. White-walled. Childhood stories of only seeing the hood. Driving by reverberating braille, hoping not to hit another trapped, and cold-sweating, driver ahead, praying not to be plowed from behind.
This fog was harmless. Low, light, puffing and swirling in a pit. Trying to dampen and darken for London effect, but only inviting sunrise to come down and settle in softly. Even as its colors retreated above. Lapping back to a pool gathering for sunset’s evening pour.
Look at the sky. Look at the ground. Look all around.
As Titus says, “Look, Papa. Look.”
Handiwork and glory.
Back tomorrow.
–Billy
Reading. Writing. Living.
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