The sun rose gently this morning. First, the softest hint of turning night into dawn in a pewter gray on the land and eventually the gold of daytime. First, the mesas tinged pink, slowly spilling into my valley the softest pallet of ever-changing pastels. The earliest birds yawned, spread their wings and began to shake their sleepy heads into song. Just one bird at first. But then, other gossipy songs chimed in. I have always wondered what they are sharing as I have listened to them in the morning dawn and their last stories of the day as the sun dips away behind the mesas and the birds say good night to each other with ever slower, softer cadences until it is just night silence accented with frogs and crickets.
The point is that the sun rises every morning without asking, “What side are you on?” Or threatening, “If you don’t believe in what I believe, I will withhold my warmth and light from you in your particular neighborhood or state or country.” The sun is the ultimate nondiscrimination power that is totally nonjudgmental of our weaknesses as human beings. Sometimes, I wonder if Jesus is the sun. The sun blesses us all every day, bringing us warmth and growing our food and supplementing our health with vitamin D and our actual lives. Sustenance. We could not live without the sun. The sun does not judge our political biases or color of skin or sexual preference or religious beliefs. The sun rises every day and shines on everyone in spite of our petty human differences that attempt to tear each other apart because of ego-based fear and greed in an attempt to turn us against them. The sun blesses all of us with its light each morning and all day – murderers and monks alike – to have the opportunity to create a better, more loving world this day. Can we, human beings, ever be as nonjudgmental and magnanimous as the sun?
Susan Urban
Durango
