Honour the day and bless the beauty it presents

Yusuf / Cat Stevens – Morning Has Broken (Official Lyric Video)

The day the Lord has made

As I sat in my living room thinking about how well today went, I felt I should be inspired to write something because there is a blessing that abides, abounds, and abodes with me that gives me an outlook and disposition I rarely can find words to explain.

Let’s look at any day in question, for in my case, every day for a long time has been a blessing, regardless of what happens in it, I have a triumphalist feeling that whatever a day brings will not dampen my desire to consider success and accomplishment.

Someone might say, the day has been difficult, probably, they even hate a particular time of day that it becomes a kind of confession that fulfils what inadvertently becomes prophetic. Whenever I wake up, I bless the Lord and would with great expectation address it as this is the day that the Lord hath made, I will rejoice and be glad in it. [Bible Hub: Psalm 118:24 (KJV)]

How can the day not turn out right if you have been given a day made by the God of beauty, wonder, and miracles?

The morning is a recreation

There are nights when sleep seems to desert me, I struggle to find the rest I need to be fresh for the day ahead. The alarm clock stirs me up as dawn breaks and I slap on the snooze button for the respite of another 10 minutes in which little is achieved compared to if you could get a snooze time of 30 minutes and consequently a power nap.

Then the strains of the hymn, “Morning has broken” seep into your consciousness as with a bounding leap out of bed, you want to celebrate the day like the first of the best, and you begin to own the beauty, the warmth, the bliss, and the sweet communion that it presents. “Mine is the sunlight! Mine is the morning, born of the one light, Eden saw play!” The hymn continues to define the day. [Hymnary.org: Morning has broken, Like the first morning]

The Boomtown Rats possibly unaware of the joy of the day or even the opportunity the week presents would sing in refrain, “Tell me why I don’t like Mondays.” I’ll tell you why you do not like Mondays; you do not see every morning as God’s recreation of a new day. Yesterday is gone forever, you are given a new start, each new day.

Then, the inspiration for the song itself was from a 16-year-old girl who thought causing the tragedy of a mass shooting at an elementary school would liven up the day. [Wikipedia: I don’t like Mondays]

One can only wonder how a life so bereft of love and the appreciation of goodness would think that senselessly taking innocent lives can be anything to contemplate.

She has been in prison since 1979 and her next parole hearing in 2025 is unlikely to give her any reason to like or dislike Mondays or any other day for that matter. How you rise for the day can quite easily define the rest of your life. [Wikipedia: Cleveland Elementary School shooting (San Diego)]

The cherished American toleration of daily tragedies

Just imagine, we are 45 years after that school shooting spree, and we still have these tragedies happening with such regularity in the United States of America like an incurable madness. To give this some perspective, it appears the first recorded school shooting was in 1764.

You might be forgiven for thinking it is a cherished American tradition, the way these tragedies are tolerated for the sake of the right to bear arms. There have been three school shootings in September 2024, alone. [Wikipedia: List of school shootings in the United States (2000–present), List of school shootings in the United States (before 2000)]

Arise, Shine

To conclude on the thinking that helped in writing this blog, I had an inward witness within that took me to this verse in Scripture. “Arise, shine; For your light has come! And the glory of the LORD is risen upon you.” [Bible Hub: Isaiah 60:1 (NKJV)]

There is a glow that comes with the blessing of a new day, you can be the light of it, the sunshine that makes everyone happy, the beauty that gives it meaning, and the memory that makes you full of gratitude. That is why each day is wonderful because as the glory of the Lord rises upon me, I rise to shine and give light to the joy of a new day.

Blessed is the day with all its troubles

The day started slowly

Going from my telephone consultation last Wednesday, it had been arranged that I visit the hospital today to see a phlebotomist and pick up my prescription. It was an afternoon appointment and I had decided I would take the day off.

Waking up a little later than usual, I went for my morning walk and returned home for another nap. At noon, I made what you could term breakfast and soon after called an Uber cab to take me to the hospital. Much as I had considered walking the 6 or so kilometres to the hospital, a headache was not giving me the pleasure of the feat.

Not here nor there

In what was a test of temperament and attitude also quite unusual for my consultant, when I checked in at the pharmacy, my prescription had not been submitted for preparation and it was even suggested I return on another day to collect it. Much as I was having none of it, the pharmacist took the initiative to put things in motion.

At the outpatient’s reception, I was directed to the waiting area for the blood room. We do have a good natter when I visit and she immediately chased up my prescription, altogether, I was assured I can pick it up after the bloods. At least, I was sure the prescription will be correct.

When I was invited to give blood, the phlebotomist could find no recent requests on the computer. There was a pending request from 2018, I think that was when the computer system could not be accessed, and the requirements were written down. No one went back to synchronise the record of activities.

Fixed through communication

The last fulfilled request was in October 2019, which left me wondering about what happened to the vampire conference donations of April 2020. As my consultant had the results for our conversation last week, I guess what is required is a bit more housekeeping to match the blood work requests with the fulfilment of the orders.

Returning to the receptionist, she phoned up the nurses and got the blood requirements straightened out, entered in the computer system and I returned to the waiting room, waiting to be called in again. This time the order was in for just 3 vials of blood, when I usually give 5 or 7 vials. I was not complaining, I could not even see a vein and it required a bit of jiggery-pokery with the needle to get the blood flowing out.

With humour and honour

Before that, I was asked to give a urine sample, on my way in I had only seen the female toilet and telling the nurse, she said, any of the toilets will do. Not that other patients in the waiting room would allow that to happen, as a chorus of voices pointed out the male toilets. The much older man quipped about my having a sex change and I cupped my breast, shock, mirth, and laughter arrived as contortions on the faces of the others. I guess we could all do with a bit of humour.

All done, I picked up my prescription, walked to the Manchester Super Store on Cheetham Hill to get some fresh fruit before boarding the tram back to Manchester Piccadilly and settling for some fresh air in the village garden. Looking at my watch, it was already 5:00 PM, the day had gone but not as eventful as Brian had his, tough and resilient, smiling through it all. I hope he has a good night’s rest. My poor dear, for his good heart, is on for a wonderful blessing. Love him to the stars and beyond.

A day in concision

A day in time

What a difference a day makes, even if you cannot remember what happened in the last 24 hours. The clock ticks away as time grows old each moment reached and left to travel into the eternity past and the present which was a moment ago the future creeps upon you.

Sometimes, we give no thought to the passing of time, I attend work at home with expectation and patience, the things we need to do are limited by the things we are yet to acquire. Our presence tested by enquiry and hesitancy, for we must amend not to offend.

The time is true

In this, we tackle the affairs of the heart, a missive on a mission for which we have agreed to accomplish a union at the next rendezvous. Putting doubts aside and stepping out in faith, there is a lot in this for us. Birthdays wishes and thankful greetings, mining the gems of relationships that matter even more.

Not much a cauldron nor a pot, the black-eyed beans boil away in the gentility of slow cooking, no concern for the hours and no fear for the burning. Eventually, when it is ready, a tasty meal is had. Crying from the hamlet far away is the patriarch, needy and needful, we cannot needless heed even as we find ourselves needing.

Doing the timely stuff

The return of the leader is suffused attending to urgencies of proximity, nothing of our questions will for now be satisfactorily answered, we have become the waiters at the tables of time. Tapping away again, the words are a jumble of nonsense and insensibility, yet, in a few hours the day’s work would have been done.

Just to remember something I heard Trevor Noah say, “If he wasn’t black, he won’t be dead.” The shooting dead of Rayshard Brooks speaks to the fact that police reform critically needs a curriculum that majors in de-escalation because there are too many trigger-happy hotheads in police uniform devoid of common sense charged with protecting us. [BBC News: Rayshard Brooks shooting: Use of deadly force by Atlanta police condemned]

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Of things that make you go, Wow!

The gift of a good story

The unexplainable becoming a story of good fortune, in that one cannot trace or determine the circumstances in which something has come to pass, is the stuff of miracles.

Whether you believe in miracles or not, there are times when you realise there is nothing in your own power you could have done to bring about the results that are laid before you as a gift and a blessing. That is when you look up as there is nothing to look around to and give thanks for providence has come with a bounty to put warmth in the heart and rouge on the cheeks that scaffold your smile.

The summary of a pleasant day

Today began so ordinarily and even quite slowly too, then time in the majesty of eternal motion took up speed, things that did have any prospect of happening soon were happening next, before you could catch your breath, another thing was bearing swiftly to you a distant future to within a present with reach.

Once again, I am given a story, brought from the brink of the prodigal into the embrace of the benevolent, that I can only be thankful and full of gratitude. The morning and the evening is another day, yet, a day that the Lord has made. Say a word of thanks on my behalf and may we all receive unexpectedly, a story better than we could ever have contemplated or imagined.

What a day it was

Stepping in

It began ominously with the threat that a few new recruits having not been following instructions to the letter would face the axe after the last warning.

I interjected with an unusual intervention that offered to implement a technical check rather than them using the unforgiving rod of strict management. I say unusual because I have on many occasions before resisted moves by management to attempt to manage their staff through technological means when what it needed was a chat between the said parties.

However, in this case, I thought it would be easier to offer a technological solution with a few logging elements that prevented the heretofore mistakes being made again.

Setting up

I went about crafting a solution and when I was satisfied with the first draft, I tested the functionality and then decided to put it through its paces in a simulated live environment.

It was at that point that I noticed one of the critical elements of my infrastructure had gone missing like disappeared without a trace. I was livid and perplexed, as I was being informed that our office move will not take account of contractors who would be expected to hot-desk.

Now, my job is not suited to hot-desking, I have many systems, some for primary usage and others for testing, along with large screens to facilitate my productivity, the whole idea was myopic in the extreme with blanket restrictions on contractual staff that the organisation needs for critical activities but are wont to treat without care or consideration.

Crying out

The first problem, however, was more serious, it meant everything I used to do to create a deliverable product was now not impossible to contemplate. When I lost one of my systems to a redeployment without being notified, I did not make a fuss but the new untrammelled Wild West activity that had crept into this setting was now unacceptably intolerable.

I fired off an email to the supposed new manager in charge of our Wild West, our Wyatt Earp of sorts and I could only heave a sigh of relief to be informed that it had only been switched off because it was not utilised. I held my cool because, as an authentication system, it did not have to be actively accessed, but it always had to be online, anyone should know that.

Sitting down

Soon afterwards, I heard that a desk had been reserved for me in the second tranche of moves, all this good news in the space of an hour. A day that seemed to be going downhill fast was suddenly snatched out of the jaws of despair.

I finished my tests, crafted an implementation notice and sent it off to all that mattered and within minutes, thanks and gratitude came flowing in. What a day that was.

The day ... now happy

The day can pass,
The day can last,
What you can,
Even not to plan,
Time goes always fast.

To work at that,
To pore at tasks,
Learn something new,
Like he often knew,
To revel he basks.

For night wore him,
He awoke to ache,
Much tea he took,
In pain he shook,
And pills he did take.

An hour now gone,
Long past crappy,
Lessons go by,
Things to apply,
He is now happy.

Thought Picnic: Fighting slumber

Slow and low

Before it becomes drudgery feeding on an atmosphere of boredom and vacantness one must find opportunities for the eventful.

Yet, excitement is not an easy thing to come by, the result of which is a day that grinds slowly on as seconds pass like minutes and minutes chime away like the hour when the cuckoos pops out to say hello.

Blow no flow

The minimal cranial activity signals something else, a relapse into the depths of soporific stupor, but one is not where the desire can be given space.

The nod must only be offered in conversation and never as a loss of control of the neck muscles.

You fight the urge as fingers on your keyboard begin to type out a script in a language yet to be understood.

Glow to grow

Oh! For the tonic to stir but to stir to what apart from being more alert to inactivity?

Then strength returns with the will as the journey home begins. Rest is needful and the hope is to be fully rested for another day.

Decade Blogs - Waffarian - Just Another Day

Decade Blogs

I was in a hospital, very ill and in too much pain, I was already off morphine because I could not keep my food down, but from my netbook connected through my mobile phone blogged as much as I could about my condition, my thoughts and other issues.

She was reading my blogs in another country, and that is how she became my friend, first through conversations on the phone as I resisted getting familiar through when she visited me in recovery and then I was able to visit her much later the next year.

Blog - Thought Picnic: My Virtual Friends Are NOT Insignificant

Blog - To Celebrate My Decade of Blogging

Whimsical, funny and humorous, with nothing taken out, she writes for my decade of blogging about a typical day in the life of, just like you and I.

You can read her blogs here.

Please read on.

A decade of blogging. I thought about writing a cute little story for you Akin. But my own blog has been a space where I have been able to write my nonsense, as you know. It would be dishonest of me to all of a sudden whip out a cute post for you so I am going to also leave piece of my madness in your space. Ha ha!

Here’s the kind of stuff I write on my blog. For many, it makes no sense. For me, it relieves me of the many thoughts that spin around in my head. Enjoy (and do not take out the profanity, I have taken over your space, so swallow it):

Today started out…as usual. I woke up in the usual silence that my apartment offers. The books scattered on the floor made me wince. I knew a hefty sum would be waiting for me at the library. I wondered if they would agree to me opening some sort of credit account over there. It’s a shame, really. It’s a handicap. To keep borrowing books and never return them while people wait in line…terrible.

I dragged myself off my bed and made some coffee. Who lives like this? I kicked some more books and found my slippers under the bed. I peeped through the curtains. Shit. Snow.

The many promises I made to myself are somewhere in this room. In the dustbin, under the bed, under the books.

I laid out my clothes on the bed for the day.  A childhood habit that crops up from time to time.  I wish my other habits from my childhood would appear. Where did all that discipline and character disappear to?

I put on my clothes and looked around once more. Keys. Where are the keys?

The walk to the train station was boring. As usual. One leg after another. I scowled at a couple holding hands and trying to maneuver their way around some slippery spots. Jesus! Let go of your hands for some seconds. Endangering the lives of others on the sidewalk with their hand holding business.

I walked into the café by the metro. I bought a cup of coffee like I usually do for my underground journey.

I sat down heavily on a vacant sit. The man opposite me starred into the distance, his eyes also vacant.

A new day had begun.