The First Sunrise

Every morning when I rise, I make the coffee, turn on the computer, and open the blinds though it’s still dark. I get to work with one eye waiting, knowing I'll stop to watch the sunrise. But this is Chicago and it's winter, and the clouds have stolen the sun. The sky is gray over the lake water. So each morning I still wait fruitlessly.

Heaven knows I need a sunrise. My world has been so cold. A sunrise would mean so much to these hungry eyes. I need the sun to warm my soul. Heaven knows. I believe that heaven knows.

I'm more patient than most people are, when I have reason to be. Though I'm not much for waiting when I have another choice. I’ve always been told that Heaven helps those who help themselves. So tonight I'll make my own sunrise. Then tomorrow morning, it will be mine. I'll have it all over again to share with everyone whenever anyone is in need.

I’ve always been able to dream lucidly—to see mental images while I'm awake. I close my eyes, still my mind, and wait for them. I hear the low tones of an Irish horn, an oboe, a choir singing, an angelic voice. My mind becomes the stardust it is made of, and I see through to the universe. I slide through my eyes on that voice, that beautiful sound, into the newest, darkest silent night—silent, yet there's music inside me softly playing.

This is the night before there was a sun, before there were people, planets, broken hearts, or broken dreams. This is the night before time began, before there was anything. This is the always was that is part of always was and always will be. Heaven and the universe are one. There are no lines drawn between. This is all emotions and all thinking as one soul, one being.

Heaven knows.

Heaven knows that we will be. Heaven knows that we will love and that we will hurt. Heaven knows that we will fight and that we will long for peace. Heaven knows that we will cry under gray skies and that we will need the sun to rise. Heaven knows that I am here.

Heaven knows.

With a tiny sound like a smile the night shifts over just a bit, and what starts with just a faint blue glimmer grows into a shining glint. The music becomes organs and violins. Then a tambourine begins as the choir sings passionately. The sky cracks and breaks into a laugh, and then bangs into drumbeats of moving graceful quasar color—stars and gases and cosmic dust—that emblazons all that exists. It cannot be anything but a gift, an embrace of creation, an artist’s final, flourish on the perfect piece of infinite glory. Every spark of stardust that I am reverberates with sound and feeling.

The first sunrise is happening here before me, around me, inside me.

Now I have its sound and color forever in my heart to keep me warm.

Oh how heaven helps the ones who help themselves.

Now I know that I am here.

—me strauss Letting me be