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.

Bowling toffee

Standups at dawn

In the mornings, nature compels a situation over which many would not have any control but to endure as a part of life experience that might be shared with another if the occasion presents. What it represents and it portends can be expressed in various ways not demanding much detail except where one is aiming for some kind of competitive prize.

Be it one where pleasure or excitement replaces the awakening moments of the rising of the sun, there is a lot of warmth and love to live in and embrace. Companionship accords a mystery that can defeat the best of those who can string together words in ways that astound.

To dip and usurp

Yet, at the rising of that star in the east is the rising from slumber and rising to perform as bowls to different deployments can be touched in the course of the day, from what nature frequently demands, to that which nature requires for sustenance and the many sports where bowls and bowling give us a spectacle of nature to revel in.

To the few that are given the gift to know that bowls can be touched like being called to a priesthood of the anointed and endowed, the bats you have been given for the game of life and the way you wield them in winning your games can only be cause for envy even as you can be proud of who you are. You wonder if there are repeating daily rituals that have been missed by the less observant.

Blogs - Bowling coffee

Bowling coffee

Standups at dawn

In the mornings we send each other video messages on WhatsApp but recently because of a pandemic control situation we do now get to have a video chat, first thing in the morning and then after work just before the networks on his side of the world start to misbehave for some unknown reason in the evenings.

Then, the videos were recorded in his office, the backdrop with medical charts and his visage a thing of undying pleasure to behold. However, depending on when I call, it is somewhere from just rising to possibly driving.

To sip and not slurp

The opportunity for a coffee to deal with the tremors of the early wake up to attend to the day could if not fully drunk leave the video conference in a shaking frenzy of possible concern. The coffee mug is hardly such that it has a handle for it is a bowl, a whole bowl for a two-handed manoeuvre from rest to lips and down again with the function of not needing another serving.

Whilst I should probably confess to thinking too much as he would at times surmise, the bowl could do ten pins in one or hit a six to the boundary. I guess that is where we got the title of bowling coffee. Having just about enough and more than the usual to give the day a start of not repeating the same ritual until the next morning. 

Back to some discipline

Out to walk at dawn

I was a bit of an early riser this morning, being awake just before 6:00 AM, I thought I might just put in the walk and I last got up at that time to perform my walking exercise in the first week of December and holding off for the days before my travel to South Africa, shielding myself to forestall an adverse test result that could scupper my travel plans.

Getting into my kit, with a high-visibility vest and LED armbands, I was out on the road but had to have my hood up because there was a light drizzle, at 4⁰ Celsius, it was best to wear my winter gloves and off I went. I usually can’t understand how I feel I am maintaining the same pace and steps cadence yet could have up to a difference of over 2 minutes per kilometre.

Pace to the familiar

My average is around a 9-minutes kilometre, though I did get in a 7-minute 2-second kilometre on the home straight, that was quite unusual, I had not done anything close to that in months. The fact that for the 11.56 kilometres I walked, I never stopped apart from when I had a short conversation with the lady and her male companion who is out each morning feeding the birds. We had not seen each other for 4 months.

Another regular morning walker is the friendly man and his two dogs, one always on the leash and the other named Tilly excitedly running into my path whenever she sees me. However, today, they had crossed the main road and we acknowledged each other with a wave. I might well return to the early morning walks, there is enough light at that time to do a good circuit. By 15,559 steps, there was a good sweat, a bit of panting, but seeing the effects will take a little longer.

Thought Picnic: In the open and broad light of day

I know I did

The last thing I did was send a message via WhatsApp and I shut down the phone to conserve battery power. Soon after, rather than put the mobile phone in my belt holster, I put it in my bag, I also switched off my Samsung Galaxy Tab and my mobile wireless dongle– I vividly remember all that, in that order.

Whenever I put my mobile phone in my bag, it always goes into the upper zippered compartment in the bag, it is the same place where my pill box and dongle goes.

But it’s not there

As I left one place for another close to midnight, I looked in my bag and somehow, I could not find my mobile phone, my mind raced ahead of my reality – I had lost it, and with that, it defined what I could see and what I could not – I earnestly believed I had lost my phone on the second and third time of checking. I was literally driven to distraction, well almost.

Now, impulsively, I could have returned to where I was to ask if anyone had handed in my phone, but I decided it could wait, but that wait almost made the night look like it would never end.

Wait for the morning

I knew there was nothing I could do until the morning, but I had to have a plan of action, return to the venue to ask about my phone, report it lost, engage the remote control antitheft facility to locate it if it gets switched on, have a picture taken of the person using it and send a message that I be contacted immediately before performing a remote wipe of the data.

Then again, I was ahead of myself, there is too much data on that phone for me to scrub it just like that, besides, it is my most reliable point of contact in these times of transition apart from the second interview I have scheduled for Thursday – mitigation, contingency, recovery and near panic – well, not really.

I tried to scheme what I needed to do and after having made out my plan to go out first thing in the morning to ask about my phone, I did everything to switch off from the bother and got on with other activities using my handy gadget that harbours the demons that haunt me constantly – the self-destruct button – a rational fatalism and much else.

Your spirit speaks

As the dawn broke, just as I reached for my bag, a voice in my head said, your phone is with you whilst another jocularly said, Fat Chance!

In the open light of day, as I considered unpacking my bag for one last time, the first thing I picked out of the upper zippered compartment was my mobile phone.

This clearly illustrates how our minds can becloud our reality leading us to believe something completely different from the truth despite the fact that the recollection of past events were as vivid as anyone could have them, I knew I put the phone in the bag, I could not think of how it could have slipped out – but there.

A switch for the mind

Besides, whilst this was another test of how I handle situations, I have been informed by experience again that I should trust my judgement a bit more, especially where I can recollect to minute detail what I did before.

More importantly, what you just need to time, maybe a clear head, maybe just absence from the situation or a wait until the dawn – usually that means you are tackling the problem with a fresh mind and all that exacting preoccupation of the mind and plans – We need a switch for that thing called the mind.

Oosterpark in the morning

Up before Eight

One ride through Oosterpark in Amsterdam East long before 8:00AM was quite an insight. I could not believe the number of senior citizens who were up and doing whilst we the younger generations were having our Saturday morning lie-ins.

In fact, my mind went back to a resident in my apartment block who always seemed to be returning from some shopping trip or activity before 8:00AM – a quite capable man even though also quite advanced in years and of very few words that acknowledged one every time we met.

I would say I have never seen him out in the normal daytime, talk less of evenings or nights, however, I do wish there is someone, somewhere who comes round to say hello.

Human-beings and human-doings

So, back to the park, my observation as I rode into the park made me decide to loiter a bit on my bike to see what it was like, because I had always cycled through in haste, never seeing, never waiting completely indifferent.

Up by the skater’s half rounds and flats, a husband and wife from the Far East, possibly ready for a golden wedding anniversary were doing their tai-chi exercises, and then on to one of the children’s play areas, one was stretching as others were exercising on the bars.

Over the pond at the park benches, 5 or 6 who might have been friends for decades were chatting away with 3 noticeably non-Caucasians, laughter broke out as one smoked away.

Further down in the mowed green grass, some travelling back-packers had camped out without any shelter, supposedly, they had spent the night outside.

Not one dog walker in sight, no noise from children, none of the youth that terrify others minding their own businesses; just an idyllic setting where the older generation have captured their piece of Amsterdam devoid of the societal morass that fills our news wires day in and day out.

Their world, our world

I would suppose these grand people of sane and hardly senile society would tarry till about 10:00AM before the sun begins to burn away the peace for the onset of chaos as insane society begins to stir up and infect the world with the madness these good people have wisely avoided by rising up like the early bird for the worm.

Looking at the situation again, these are retired people who still get up early and do things that gives value and substance to their lives in community and social settings amongst their long known peers; whereas our ideas of retirement are about slumber, sloth, loafing, sauntering, idling and lazy sun worshipping, aborting certain routines of our earlier lives and looking for new locations to emigrate to in some ideal setting, separating ourselves from the lifeblood of the community of enduring fellowship and hence quickening the steps of the grim reaper.

I think we have lots to learn from those lively, healthy, laughing and wise senior citizens who wake up each morning to see the new dawn – How to start the day and how to relax – as we bay for the setting of the sun. I like Amsterdam in the early morning at the park.