Morning song

With the 5am light the birds praise the morning in song. I try and will myself back to sleep but the melodies are persistent. At first, I am annoyed—could you find a tree at a greater distance from the window, or fly on down the road? But the birds are exuberant, surrounded by the crisp and cloudless day.

As I open the blinds to the clear view of the Olympic mountain range, I too sing out: Modah Ani! The birdsong, like the shofar, sounds as a spiritual alarm clock. And with open hearts, our voices of praise join in the chorus of creation.

I love this poem by Harriet Kofalk as an expression of Modah Ani:

Awakening

in a moment of peace

I give thanks

To the source of all peace

as I set forth

into the day

The birds sing

with new voices

and I listen with new ears

and give thanks

nearby

the flower called Angel’s Trumpet

blows

in the breeze

and I give thanks

my feet touch the grass

still wet with dew

and I give thanks

both to my mother earth

for sustaining my steps

and to the seas

cycling once again

to bring forth new life

The dewdrops

become jewelled

with the morning’s sun-fire

and I give thanks

you can see forever

When the vision is clear

in this moment

each moment

I give thanks

Yesterday, late Shabbat afternoon, I walked with my dad around the neighborhood and happened upon a red-headed woodpecker. It was hilariously pecking a stop sign. As we approached, it continued its curious drumbeat. At first, the entertainment was simply that the woodpecker didn’t know better, but after we lingered for a while, it appeared our red-headed friend was watching our reaction too, perhaps even suggesting that we human beings are the curious ones. We are the ones wrestling with what it means to “stop”, to pause the churning wheels of machinery.

David Abrams writes: “To touch the coarse skin of a tree is thus, at the same time, to experience one’s one tactility, to feel oneself touched by the tree. And to see the world is also, at the same time, to experience oneself as visible, to feel oneself seen” (The Spell of the Sensous, p.68).

As I offer thanks this early morning, I do so for the growing awareness that my body is part of the land’s body, that my song is part of this great symphony—that it is not only me perceiving the world, but that the red-headed woodpecker and the red cedar and all the forest Life, are praying too, with continuous Breath.