Sacred Saturdays

 

There is something semi-sacred about Saturday mornings.  Sure, Sunday mornings are more traditionally the thing, but the quiet time of early Saturday mornings has its own spiritual resonance with me.

On a week day my alarm goes off at 6am and I am out of the house by 7am.  Saturday mornings I sometimes imagine I will sleep in if my daughter doesn’t need to be taken somewhere for her boundless activities.  I awaken around 6 and go in and out of dream states until by 7 I imagine it’s probably at least 8:30 or 9, maybe 10, but it is just 7 and I am wide awake and must get up.

This is the time to feed Nala, gather up my reading and writing materials (books and an iPad usually), and then let her out in the front yard to do her business followed by her luxuriating in the grass watching someone else walk their dog so she can quietly woof at them.  And let’s not forget that coffee must be made for sipping on the front porch while all of this is going on.

When I finish a chapter or section of a chapter I insert my bookmark, close the book, and listen.  There are two birds with two distinct songs in two different trees singing back and forth like antiphonal singing at church.  I notice a lone firefly looking to land on the hostas which brings to mind the lovely scene last night of him and his buddies winking on and off like stars twinkling over my darkened front lawn.

Before the sun fully appears in the sky I feel like I am in a liminal space of sorts between night and day, outside of time and the cares of this world.  When the rest of the world wakes up that will be my time to re-enter the normal flow of things, but in that brief moment it is like I have touched something transcendent, free from externally imposed expectations.

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