Just Another Sunrise

how the most common, everyday, ordinary moments in life are actually our richest source of all the best treasures

I’m so glad you’re here! Moments is a place to explore connecting with nature, appreciating the wonders unfolding in the world all around us all the time. I hope my photography + stories will inspire you to be curious, be amazed, and then do it again!

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I am not a morning person, in that sense of someone who rises effortlessly in the pre-dawn hours to enjoy the peace of a world still sleeping.*

*My teenage sons (I am absolutely serious) are somehow that type of morning person.

But I am absolutely a morning person, in that sense of someone who recognizes that morning moments are miraculous and I never get tired of them!

Sunrises are among the most contemplated, celebrated, photographed, described, shared, deeply felt, romanticized, symbolized phenomena on the planet.

Sunrise is symbolic of so many big things. Hope. Joy. Peace. Renewal. Awakening. Beginnings. You can read about it, you can study it across human history, and you can also just feel it. In fact, you can’t really stand in the presence of a sunrise and not feel something.

Sunrise is also just literally a really big thing. A new day. Light returning to a world in darkness. An object 865 thousand miles across and 92 million miles away just coming into view. Not to mention the source of energy for all of the world’s daily activities.

We never get tired of describing sunrises, of weaving sunrise metaphors, of trying to express the deep emotions stirred by experiencing a bright sun igniting a new day. I’m doing it right now.

And after thousands and millions of sunrises, and thousands and millions of people describing them, there can’t actually be anything new to say about them, but I will keep trying anyway because that’s what happens when eternity settles in your heart.

But also, a sunrise is the most fundamentally utilitarian of astronomical functions. It’s as common as the day is long. As predictable as the fact that you’ll be running late on the way to your favorite spot to photograph it. Life depends on its being completely common and entirely predictable.

And that’s the whole exciting point, really, the very fact that something so completely miraculous is also so constantly at hand. You can be amazed by a sunrise every day like clockwork. And if you miss one, you don’t have long to wait for the next showing.

Sunrises make it easy to see beauty in the ordinary, to appreciate the (literally) everyday. And that’s because it’s exceedingly obvious that, though the same sun keeps rising day after day, no two sunrises are ever alike.

And not only is each sunrise different from the last, each moment of each sunrise is a study in change.

But do you know, most of the most common things in life are like that, too?

The bird that’s in your yard every morning. His song, though familiar, is never just exactly the same twice.

That cup of coffee. It’s a morning routine, and yet, no two will ever be exactly the same.

The summer flowers in your garden, every year the same kinds, blooming in the same places, seeing every blossom for the first time.

The truth is, we are never far from an opportunity to appreciate the same old thing, brand new in this moment.

You might think, since I am easily amazed and also grateful for the most ordinary things, that I must be a very happy person…But that’s actually the opposite of the point!

My days are filled with all the ups and downs. I’m an emotionally sensitive person to begin with, so there are few things that I feel lightly. I’m still recovering from providing end-of-life Alzheimer’s care to my mom last year. I am currently at that point in mid-life when my internal chemistry is changing invisibly, unpredictably, and sometimes-seemingly-maliciously. And I have teenagers.

Life is a full-spectrum event, and grief and anger and fear and exhaustion are every bit as important to make room for in our journeys. The great big point is that, in any given moment, in any dark valley, at the end of any given rope, we will never have to look very far to find a hint of comfort, a spark of joy, a momentary relief…a tiny anchor in a vast sunrise horizon.

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