AWAKENINGS AND NEW BEGINNINGS

When you stop to think about it, waking up in the morning is a wonderful thing.  We all do it, if we are lucky.  It certainly beats the alternative anyway.

While I love my bed and generally go to sleep the moment my head hits the pillow, I find myself increasingly gratified to wake up in a new day.  Such was not always the case for me.

Maybe because I do not have a particular schedule to meet and am free of the demands of a job awaiting me, I now linger between the covers a little longer after waking up each morning.  In my first five to ten minutes of consciousness, I have discovered a peculiarly receptive and impressionable state.  All relations with the material world have for a time been shut off and, excluding the possibility of a bad dream or two, the mind is in a freer and more natural state.  This is no doubt why many times the highest and truest impressions come to one in the early morning hours, before the activities of the day and their attendant distractions have exerted an influence.  We  all probably do our clearest thinking in our first few waking minutes of the day, if only we had the ability to bottle it.

But you know, we can take advantage of this valuable quiet time when our mind is a clean slate, to direct thoughts productively along the highest and most desirable paths, thereby setting the pace for the day.  We can be thankful that each morning is a new beginning and we have it entirely in our own hands to make the best of it.  There is nothing in this connection that can be conceived of that cannot be realized somehow, somewhere, sometime.  Yesterday becomes just that -- yesterday.  And tomorrow is...well, tomorrow.

It is sufficient for us to know, however, that the way we live our today determines our tomorrow.  The secret rests in how we utilize those first few minutes each day before getting up on the right side of the bed -- and beginning again, fresh and awake to the potential that lies within and without.

Hello skies all burnished brightly;
   Here in the spent earth all reborn;
Here are the tired limbs springing lightly
   To face the sun and to share the morn
   In the chrism of dew and cool of the dawn.

Every day is a fresh beginning,
   Listen, my soul, to the glad refrain,
And, spite of old sorrow and older sinning,
   And puzzles forcasted, and possible pain,
   Take heart with the day and begin again.