Lauds
a service of morning prayer in the Divine Office of the Western Christian Church, traditionally said or chanted at daybreak, though historically it was often held with matins on the previous night.
Morning Video - something to sit and watch and listen
if you don't live near the sea.
if you don't live near the sea.
..............
May Lauds
So what is all this excitement about sleep and waking?
Does the drama of the darkest of darkness
Transforming into bright illuminating lightness and warmth
Really demand all the attention
That poets, songwriters, spiritualists and therapists give it?
What is this mystical authority that consumes our spirits
As we wake from journeys in dreamland ?
Spiritual exercises for daybreak have proliferated
volumes and practises for thousands of years.
Apollo, Helios and Ra dominated ancient myths as
Rising suns were the focus of f pre-Jesus poets
And cultures along the pacific rim.
Friends and strangers query
the contemporary pilgrim
As to his early rising
And solemn pre-dawn practice.
“You have access to anything you want
And anything you need,” they say.
“There are pills for sleep
and energy shots to prime your heart in the morning.”
The pilgrim humbly asked
“What of gratitude?
What of mindfulness?
What of the ever magnificent power-filled
Purity of love and serenity discovered in all of nature?
What of the sacred essence that energizes the soul,
The heart and the mind in one
Illuminating moment”?
He added that his waking moments
Are not with the expectation of the enlightenment
Experienced by Buddha
But an opportunity to take as much time as necessary
To be present with the holiness that
Connects everything in the universe.
“ I believe I need to practice… to be spiritually , emotionally and physically energized
With love , peace , compassion , joy and hope
With the hope that I will remember to remember
That all creation is a sacrament
Even my own imperfect prodigal life.”
- JF Sobecki
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Why I Wake Early
by Mary Oliver
Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who make the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and crotchety–
Hello, you who make the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and crotchety–
best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light–
good morning, good morning, good morning.
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light–
good morning, good morning, good morning.
Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.
in happiness, in kindness.
What to remember when waking
In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake,
coming back to this life from the other
more secret, moveable and frighteningly honest world
where everything began,
there is a small opening into the new day
which closes the moment you begin your plans.
What you can plan is too small for you to live.
What you can live wholeheartedly will make plans enough
for the vitality hidden in your sleep.
To be human is to become visible
while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others.
To remember the other world in this world
is to live in your true inheritance.
You are not a troubled guest on this earth,
you are not an accident amidst other accidents
you were invited from another and greater night
than the one from which you have just emerged.
Now, looking through the slanting light of the morning window
toward the mountain presence of everything that can be
what urgency calls you to your one love?
What shape waits in the seed of you
to grow and spread its branches
against a future sky?
Is it waiting in the fertile sea?
In the trees beyond the house?
In the life you can imagine for yourself?
In the open and lovely white page on the writing desk?
-- David Whyte
coming back to this life from the other
more secret, moveable and frighteningly honest world
where everything began,
there is a small opening into the new day
which closes the moment you begin your plans.
What you can plan is too small for you to live.
What you can live wholeheartedly will make plans enough
for the vitality hidden in your sleep.
To be human is to become visible
while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others.
To remember the other world in this world
is to live in your true inheritance.
You are not a troubled guest on this earth,
you are not an accident amidst other accidents
you were invited from another and greater night
than the one from which you have just emerged.
Now, looking through the slanting light of the morning window
toward the mountain presence of everything that can be
what urgency calls you to your one love?
What shape waits in the seed of you
to grow and spread its branches
against a future sky?
Is it waiting in the fertile sea?
In the trees beyond the house?
In the life you can imagine for yourself?
In the open and lovely white page on the writing desk?
-- David Whyte
Lauds Gregorian Chant from Assisi
A Time to Rise – The Subdudes
Morning Has Broken – Cat Stevens
The Prodigal Son – Ry Cooder
https://youtu.be/HEUIZWyieAk
https://youtu.be/HEUIZWyieAk
Slow Turning – John Hiatt
“One day I will find the right words and they will be simple”
- Jack Kerouac
“The only truth is music”
- Jack Kerouac
Copyright All Rights Reserved 2018 JF Sobecki LLC
