About that “Great Getting Up Morning...”

 

It has been a long while. Busy-ness followed by a blessed period of avoiding busy-ness and my computer, but this reflection has been rumbling around for a while, perhaps because my morning starts have not been so frantic of late. 

For years I've loved the above version of the African American Spiritual "In that Great Getting Up Morning" by the operatic sopranos Jessye Norman and Kathleen Battle recorded at the Carnegie Hall.

I have never, however, been much of a morning person, yet in his letters to the Corinthians and Thessalonians when writing about the resurrection uses the image of waking up in response to a trumpet reveille... In my mind, the only thing worse could be bagpipes...

But then a couple of days ago at a funeral for a wonderful man who loved literature, his niece read the short poem "Resurrection" by Vladimir Holan which shares some of my antipathy to a rapid, raucous entry into a new day, even an eternal one... So in the light of that I finished this and offer it to you to reflect on whether you are an owl or a lark... 


Gracious God, I want to talk to you about

that metaphorical “great getting up morning...”

because I was seriously wondering whether

it has to be heralded with heavenly trumpets,

a reveille, shattering the prayed for peaceful rest?

Even a cockerel’s crowing might be too much,

bringing to mind those times of angry denial,

rather than the unspoken forgiveness

that awaits us with breakfast on the beach,

once we have crossed that proverbial river.

You made me more of an owl than a lark,

so could I not, perhaps, have a long lie in,

given that it will be possible one more,

because my bladder will work perfectly again,

and I will have no need for morning medications,
or a mug of strong coffee to help me face the day?
Let me lie in till lunchtime, with all eternity to come.
Then I will rise and put on not the stained, worn
and crumpled clothes, discarded as night fell,
but those prepared, pristine and imperishable.

Selah