a view from my bed

I am not a morning person, by any stretch of the imagination. During my novitiate experience I spent 3 months in London working at a homeless day center. Our house was about an hour out the the central city by bus, and I had to be there between 6:30 and 6:45 am to begin serving coffee at 7. Do the math and you can see that I had to get up VERY early. The only way I managed to make it work was to shift my internal clock, going to bed at 8pm.

For some people, of course, that is normal - going to be at 8pm and waking up at 4am. For me, not so much. But sometimes, like this morning, I have early morning commitments and need to be out the door by 7. It's out of the norm and so I am usually, like last night, unable to go to bed early, and end up feeling a bit groggy in the morning. Groggy, but manageable once in a while.

Why do I bring this up? Only because in part of my struggle to wake up and get out of bed in the morning, I open my window blinds which I can pull from the bed and look outside. Our house is in a city neighborhood, and so mainly I see our neighbor's house, and a glimpse of our cherry tree. I also see the power lines, and in particular the t-type structure where the power lines come together.

This morning, when I opened my eyes (after earlier opening them to open the blinds and then closing my eyes to catch another little snooze), I saw the t-type structure, which looked decidedly like a cross or crucifix. Obviously, the shape is the same. But this morning, without my glasses, and with the way the light was playing on the power line structure, I found myself thinking of Jesus. Thinking of the people with crosses to bear in their daily lives, struggles far deeper and wider than my own 7:30 am meeting. And I prayed. A nice way to wake up in the morning.