Dear Friends
I’m not sure whether the grey light or the birdsong wakes me up in the summer. Maybe it’s both. Either way, I love waking up to the sound of another day, keeping my eyes closed a little longer just to float in the dawn chorus. With the windows wide open and Peter still asleep, and Hound Henry still snoozing across my legs, it’s hard to imagine a safer spot on earth — or one that requires less of me.
Then, as consciousness dawns, I start to distinguish the voices of our neighbors, and then name them: nuthatch, chickadee, cardinal, wren, catbird, finch, virio, woodpecker, and the raucous crow family that lives in the woods across the street. Naming is fun; it activates old knowledge, gathered first in years of watching and listening with my mom, and later tromping through woods and fields with a field guide in my back pocket. But now — no tromping. Just lying still, listening.  
I wonder about the pleasure of naming and why my brain runs that way. Why don’t I rest longer, just basking in the mix of gorgeous morning song? What is this impulse to analyze? Is my categorizing a way to assert control? Later, as I’m moving through the hours, do I carry this labeling habit into the beautiful mix of human voices that swirls around me all day long, or do I receive each person with wonder, with love?
If I could just be still and listen a little longer, what new beauty and truth would wash over me like the dawn chorus? What connection, what empathy might we discover if we could resist the urge to classify and control with our old knowledge,
and simply receive the songs and stories and people who fill each day?
~ In peace, Becky