Sunrise, Sunset

Even if I cannot leave the world behind on vacation and I occasionally feel that Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are closing in on me, there is something quite wonderful about having time to watch the Sunset each night and ride to marvel at its rising the next day.

                          And it was evening and it was morning the Sixth Day!

I've long been the kind of person who revels in words ... In English something to CREATE with RECREATE. In Biblical Hebrew the words for CREATION בריאה and HEALTH בריאות have the same roots.

Until now, in my adult life, I've "vacated" for some 5 weeks, each year. I've upped that, now, to 6, planning to eventually arrive at working for 3 weeks each month. I don't yet understand the notion of retirement ... maybe someday I will. I can say that I, well into the Last Quarter of life, feel an impulse  -- I cannot quite call it a need -- to take time for long rests and for short naps.

I listened to a spritely Jimmy Carter, this morning. 90+ years old (I think of 80 and over as OVERTIME) and talking of his illness and treatments with distinct clarity. He stumbled in retrieving one word and one word only ... and now just a few hours later, I can't retrieve it, either. Maybe it will come to me ... maybe it doesn't matter.

The sunrise this morning mattered to me. Out over the Atlantic, it rose into an almost linear array of clouds on the horizon. On both sides of the first rays of light, there were clouds shaped like mice standing on their hind legs, facing the place wherethe Sun was busy starting its trajectory. Two mice on either side ... and me on the Beach. A not-so-large number of other Solar Pagans were there taking in the sight.

Something about watching the Sun rise?! I came from a family whose vacations were visiting Aunt Helen and Uncle Linwood on the Farm. When I began vacationing with my own family at this Virginia beach 36 years ago, I would take my older kids each morning to take in the spectacle ... they were 12 and 13, then, and could share that space and time with me. As a youngster M and I worked with 40+ years ago noted: "When I hit puberty, puberty hit back." Our kids' adolescence temporarily removed interest in the rising Sun ... life IS, indeed, about change. It would've been nice to have my boys out there. Alas. Gatitude is about our revelling in what we have even if our human sense of awarenss and our memory tell us about what no longer is.

Still, I have a great deal ... and for an example of the uniquely human capacity for reflection? I have President Carter. And for someone who sees nothing but his own reflection in the Looking Glass? I will always have folk like Donald Trump.