This morning, appropriate for our times, it was an Easter sunrise service of one. Two if you count the dog.
Not planned, actually. In lieu of an alarm clock, I now have an old dog who thinks he’s a rooster. At the first gray hint of approaching dawn, he’s outside the bedroom door squeaking like a rusty hinge.
Whining, it’s called in dogspeak.
Eventually he gets his way because the sound is uniquely sleep-unfriendly. So up I got and out we went. Down the street. Past the pond. Over the bridge.
Then, we followed his nose, which followed the usual route into the dewy, sniff-friendly field along the river to the waterfall and the roiling waters below.
There we saw it. That flint-spark atop the still-leafless trees and evergreens to the east. That’s when it dawned on me: Sunrise on Easter morning.
And so, quite spontaneously and while my best friend was otherwise occupied looking down, I looked up and said a nondenominational prayer for all denominations.
The prayer went out in circles like the proverbial ripples in a lake after a pebble falls into its depths.
The circles went so: for my family, my friends, my neighbors, my countrymen, my fellow citizens of the world. For health, for peace, for not only the pursuit of happiness, but its capture. The natural rights of man everywhere.
Amen.
Didn’t seem like too tall an order. At least at the time.
When the moment finally burst and I was just a man standing in a field again, I tugged on the dog’s leash and we continued our journey into the unknown by way of home.
Sometimes holidays come in odd packages, and sometimes they’re the best kind. No matter what the circumstances.