Listen to the Morning
March 31, 2024
Rev. Dan Schatz
“Every now and then I hear mothers talking about – well really bragging about how well their babies sleep, and their children sleep. They sleep all night, and sleep until 7 or 8 o’clock in the morning, and I listen to those tales with just amazement, because I never had a baby that slept, or a child that slept. They somehow did not realize that nighttime was for sleeping, and even when they learned to sleep all night long they would wake up at the first showing of the dawn. By 5 o’clock every child I ever had was wide awake and ready for the day.
“And I guess it’s pretty good that I got up, cause I had a good many chores to do with three little children very near the same age. But I remember one morning when my little boy was maybe five years old. I heard him stirring in his room about daylight and I started to get up, and he called me very gently. “Mother, don’t get up. Lie still and listen to the morning.” And I lay there and I listened, and I heard some bluejays quarreling out in the backyard, heard our cat “Meooowing.” I heard our newspaper boy coming down the street on his bicycle and hitting the screen door with the paper. And it reminded me of all the sounds I heard early, listening to the morning.
“I remember being down in the river swamps, fishing. Down there your guide or your boat paddler, down in southwest Alabama, down in those forks of the Alabama and the Tombigbee, will say to you, “I’ll meet you down here at the boat landing at the first singing of the birds,” or “at the second singing of the birds.” ‘Cause down there they measure those early morning hours in that way. There comes, before the real dawn, a false dawn, when it begins to get a little light, and the birds in the swamp wake up and they begin to sing, the redbird sings first, and then all the birds sing, and the whole swamp is filled with music. And then it gets very dark again, and there’s absolute silence there. And then the real dawn comes, and they sing again. And I remember listening to the morning down there.
“And I remember listening to the morning, later, in Selma, when the vegetable vendors would come around and they’d call out, “I got cabbages and peas, beans, and okra. I got fresh dewberries, dewberries, dewberries.” They were beautiful sounds, early in the morning. And I still like, when I awaken early, to lie still, and listen to the morning.”
– Kathryn Tucker Windham
Sermon: “Listen to the Morning”
Have you ever listened to the morning? Have you listened to the quiet rustling and early calls of the first birds, the sounds of delivery trucks and passersby, the first conversations out on a city street? Have you listened to the morning?
Every place has its own tapestry of dawn. The desert, city, coastline and suburban streets all awake to their own music. The world rises to the soft soundscape of first light.
I remember dawn in the Eastern slopes of the White Mountains, where I began my first ministry. My home was a little rental house in Tamworth, New Hampshire, where I could literally walk to the top of Mt. Chocorua from my door. (I never did that, but I could have.) In the Summer, when the weather got hot, I would sleep with the windows open, awakened each day by the songbirds somewhere in the four o’clock hour – so many, and so beautiful, in that wooded place.
I tried to ignore it. I mean, I love nature; I love birds, I love bird song; I just don’t love getting up in the morning. Metaphorical mornings, yes, but actual ones are hard for my insomniac self. So even as I recognized the miracle and glory in my ears, my actual response in the moment was to grumble, get up, shut all the windows, put a pillow over my head, and try to go back to sleep.
But all these years later, I still remember those dawn sounds clearly and, ironically, I remember them joyfully. Yes, it was annoying to be woken up, but it was also enlivening. Out of silence comes wonder. Out of stillness, creation – every single day.
Sometimes we need to be reminded of that. Sometimes our lives don’t feel wondrous or glorious, or anything but hard. Sometimes we’re carrying around so much emotional noise that we miss the signs of renewal.
My second ministry was more suburban, and also more organized. They had written into my contract that I would lead an Easter sunrise service each year at 6:30 am. You can imagine how happy this failed to make me, who had to get up at 4:30, before the first or the second singing of the birds, and make the long trek over the Pennsylvania turnpike to Warrington, where members of the church had prepared a bonfire for the occasion. It was an exhausting way to spend the holiday, between the dawn service, and the two later ones, but every one of those sunrise services was magical.
We took in the sounds of the morning, there by the Little Neshaminy Creek – muffled voices in the thick dawn air, the crackling fire, the singing of birds and people, traffic sounds out on the road, and just one year, the wail of incoming sirens, because the Warrington Fire Department failed to get the memo.
In that service, each year, we would take greens left over from the previous Christmas, think of something we wanted to let go of, and toss them into the flames, which leapt higher and higher as we spiritually rid ourselves of burdens, fears, and grudges. And then, recognizing that you can’t let go of a thing without filling that empty space with something new, we placed our hopes for the coming season in seeds and flowers, laid them on a little wooden barge, and launched them into the creek.
It was a soundscape of hope – the rising flame, soft voices of families bundled up against an early Spring chill, lapping waters against creek banks, cheers as our symbolic hopes drifted into a gentle current.
We need moments such as this. We need reminders of the spirit’s resurrection, the Earth’s re-creation, our soul’s ability to renew itself, whatever we’ve been through, whatever we’re going through. We need to listen to the morning, because sometimes all that wonder and beauty seem very far away, and the exaltation of life can just ring hollow.
There are times when we don’t feel it. There are times when all we feel is empty. Stuck. Angry. Frightened. Grieving. Trapped. And sometimes we know it’s going be like that for awhile.
Maybe we’ve lost someone we love – a friend, a spouse, a parent, a child – and we can’t find our way out from the despair of having to face life without them. Or maybe we’ve been attacked because of who or what we are, and it doesn’t feel like it’s ever going to end. Maybe we’ve received a rough diagnosis and are beginning to face a changed life, or a shorter one. Maybe we made a mistake, and hurt another soul, because we were too full of ourselves, or too wrapped up in our own fears, or we failed to think enough about somebody else. Maybe we feel betrayed, and we’re caught in a cycle of rage, and we don’t know who to trust, or how to stop being angry, and pretty soon everything we thought we knew seems determined to undermine us. It’s hard to conjure up much enthusiasm for the miracle of life when you’re going through a time like that. And what does resurrection mean, anyway?
Every once in awhile, before we’re ready for it, before we can face the world, before we even know what to do with it, we hear the first singing of the birds. It isn’t dawn, it doesn’t mean our problems are solved or that we can even face them quite yet. The singing is a fleeting thing. Night returns. Emptiness returns. But it may be just enough to remind us that the morning is coming, the dawn will rise, and a new day will begin.
Listen to the morning.
The Christian story of Easter is one of betrayal, death, and rebirth. I have never believed in the bodily resurrection of Jesus, or of anybody else. I have never believed in substitutionary atonement, and I’m not big on messiahs.
But I know something about communities. I know what it’s like for a community to be torn apart by conflict and by recrimination. I know the hurt that comes when our expectations get overturned, when our hopes are upended, and the pangs of our worst fears sound more and more loudly in our souls. I know what it’s like to feel distrust of people and institutions on whom we had come to rely. I know what it’s like, in a situation like that, to lash out in anger, and I know what it’s like to be treated with derision or scorn because of the path I choose follow. And I’m embarrassed to say I know what it’s like to treat someone else that way. I’m sorry.
Jesus knew something about all that, too. The community that had gathered around him knew a lot about it. They came into Jerusalem so triumphant, so ready for the crowing moment of everything they’d labored for. And it all got taken away, just like that. They didn’t know what to do. They argued, and bickered, and prayed, and mourned, but mostly they just felt empty. Inside themselves they heard – nothing.
But a group of women did something different. While the male disciples sat in the ashes of everything they’d lived for, three days after Jesus had died, the women set out very early and listened to the morning.
In a way, I think, their grief was more personal, or at least, they chose to deal with it in a more personal way, carrying the spices and ointments to consecrate the body of their – teacher? Savior? Neither word could express what they felt. They carried the spices to the place where Jesus had been buried, so they could care for the body of their friend.
Out on the long walk, they listened to the morning. And when they came to the place where Jesus had been buried, and found the stone rolled away, they began again to feel a hint of life.
It was the first singing of the birds.
And they went away terrified and amazed, and Mark’s version of the story says they didn’t tell anyone. Luke’s version says they told the disciples, but nobody believed them. And it wasn’t all glorious, and it wasn’t perfect, but something in that morning, at the bird’s first singing, brought just enough hope to carry them through. And though night returned, slowly the people began to wake to a new way of being together, hope, spirituality, a life path.
Listen to the morning.
There will be times when you just can’t deal. There will be times when it seems the world is against you. There will be times when everything you’ve given your life to seems more far away than you could ever reach. There will be times when it seems like love itself has abandoned you.
Listen to the morning.
In the safety of darkness, life has waited for you. At first it may sound hesitant and faltering, or it could be a joyful cacophony yielding again to silent emptiness. You may be amazed or afraid. You have come so close to the other side.
Don’t lose hope. In that returning silence, do not lose hope. You have heard the first singing of the birds.
Listen. Listen to the morning, and as the dawn begins to appear over the far horizon, as the sky slowly brightens and color returns to the world, listen for the second singing of the birds.
Maybe for you, it’ll take more than one morning for life to return, and a soul made empty to be filled with beauty and love and laughter again, but listen. Listen to the morning. Keep listening.
This time, dawn is real. This time, hope does not fade. This time, the singing of the birds becomes louder, and the sounds of the world waking become truer, and the song of love begins to ring once again, and this time, you can feel it.
All around you, life wakes and stirs.
Listen to the morning. Give yourself to its gentle ministrations, and with the day itself, become reborn.
Listen to the morning.
Wake to the world,
and greet this day of wonder.