Twilight is long in these days before the summer solstice and dawn comes earlier each morning. The birds are filling the air with their songs even as the night is fading from the sky. But at that precise moment just as the sun is about to make its entrance from the doorway of the east, they fall silent, perhaps out of a profound sense of awe and expectation. But then as the sun steps over the eastern threshold they freak out into a glory Hallelujah chorus that echos from horizon to horizon summoning all who slumber, to waken to the celebration of a new day.

It always seems to me that missing that moment we call sunrise leaves the day somehow incomplete, as though we opened a book in the middle instead of reading it from its very first page. It is a privilege to greet the rising sun and a time that is sacred, set apart as it were, from the mundane and ordinary routine that follows us through our everyday lives.

I consider it one of the great blessings of my life to be a greeter and a witness to the miracle of the rising sun.