Morning Has Broken

The blessings and burden of daybreak.

Photo by s2 art on Unsplash

Moisten your lips with God’s remembrance in the morning:

We have reached the morning, and at this very moment, all dominion belongs to Allah…

From bedroom to bathroom, kitchen to out the door. Cleaner, fresher, more awake by the minute. The day begins.

What can we observe outside the window?

The orange-pink cirrus clouds greet the people of the world as they make their way into it. The sky a dusty pale blue is wide and never-ending — I think of filling it with my dreams.

From the lightbulbs and lamps of their homes, the people step into shoes and step into daylight. These breaths of fresh air are their lifeblood, though perhaps they do not know it, riding into the location of the building that has the room that has the desk and chair where they will sit for the next six hours. The sun shines in, and the rain beats down on the bus’ windows.

If you join me on my bus, we ride past fields and towns, industrial estates and shopping centres, the rural tickling the urban, as is always the case with flirtatious Dublin planning. There are beautiful bright flowers in the grass along the way, purple and yellow and pink, how I wish to hop off the bus and pick one flower for my hair and one for my khimar.

Does anyone remember when Leopold Weiss/Muhammad Asad narrated:

‘Tell me, O Shaykh, why is it that the faranjis always wear hats that shade their eyes? How can they see the sky?’

‘That is just what they do not want to see’, replies the shaykh, with a twinkle in my direction. ‘Perhaps they are afraid lest the sight of the heavens remind them of God; and they do not want to be reminded of God on weekdays…’

Perhaps someone might recall when Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam sang:

Morning has broken like the first morning
Blackbird has spoken like the first bird
Praise for the singing, praise for the morning
Praise for them springing fresh from the world

Sweet the rains new fall, sunlit from Heaven
Like the first dewfall on the first grass
Praise for the sweetness of the wet garden
Sprung in completeness where His feet pass

Mine is the sunlight, mine is the morning
Born of the one light, Eden saw play
Praise with elation, praise every morning
God’s recreation of the new day

Does anyone remember the blessing of the new day? How often do we forget it as we go around our constructed little lives?

Seize the day with love and gratitude, purpose and meaning. It is yours for the taking, waiting to be grasped by the hands of one determined to use each of its minutes and hours wisely. Dedicate this day to the One who gave it to you.

Consider when Ibn ‘Umar said:

If you survive till the evening, do not expect to be alive in the morning, and if you survive till the morning, do not expect to be alive in the evening, and take from your health for your sickness, and (take) from your life for your death.

And Imam Hasan al-Basri did tell us:

Remember, O child of Adam! You are nothing but a number of days. Whenever a day passes then a part of you has gone.

It really is something to consider each time the sun rises.