These Holy Hours

I love my morning routine, writing about it often, noting the joy that it me brings me along with the many benefits I believe it offers. It's a growing thing, expansive, maneuvering quietly through these holy hours well before the first light of dawn. My sacrifice is made in going to bed quite early, when most of the world is still active, busy - yet I don't regret it all, being well worth the time I get to spend in silence. 

And that's really the important point for me here, it's that the things I do, as healthy and helpful as they are, each of them is performed as a ritual, the performance itself taking precedence over benefits. Everything is done for the sake of an earliest joy, found only through actions performed in the deep silence offered through these holy hours.

my routine is quite specific to me, meeting health needs and other concerns that I wish to be mindful of in this stage of my life. But I can easily say, truly so, that everything has spiritual value, equal to my meditation time and that, indeed, to all flows from that silent point of sitting. Waking early, there's no rush now, and it seems that the morning belongs completely to me, no one else being yet ready to start their day and make the sacrifice of an earlier time in bed. Truthfully though, I would happily trade an hour or so of sleep for the magic that I have right now.

every sound is hushed, almost tentative in their arrival, with only a few sounds easing through, briefly so, softly, and then instantly returning to the silence of their hold. That's the magic, not the absence of morning noise, nor the peace found through my slower pace - but that everything is held by the hush of these holy hours, eager to return, and that for the rest of the day, if I listen, even if only giving the briefest pause, once more hearing these the silence of these holy hours...

and softly then, 

I return to them as well. 

~

Peace, Eric