The light is different now

"Let me hear of your steadfast love in the morning, for in you I put my trust. Teach me the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul."* — Psalm 143:8

The light is different now.

I do not mean the obvious things, which are also true — the sun coming later, the angle lower, the kitchen darker at six than it was in August. I mean the quality of it. There is a thing the light does in October that it does not do in any other month. It comes in at an angle that catches the wall above the sink where it never reaches in summer, and for about fifteen minutes in the early morning the wall is gold, and then the gold moves, and then it is gone, and the kitchen is just a kitchen again.

I have been noticing this for forty-seven years and I noticed it again this morning.

The prayer list was said. Same names, same order. Edna's hip. Dan's knee. Hannah, always. The woman at church. Caleb. The list does not change much from week to week and I do not think it needs to. Faithfulness is not variety.

And after the list was done, the minute came again. The one I wrote about last week, the one where I do not get up and do not ask for anything and do not try to be still — I just am still, the way the table is still, the way the wall is still when the gold is on it.

It is becoming a habit and I do not know what to make of that. A habit is a thing you choose. I did not choose this. It arrived the way the light arrives, because the angle is right and the season is right and I happen to be sitting in the chair when it comes through.

The psalmist says let me hear of your steadfast love in the morning. I do not know what I am hearing. I know what I am not hearing, which is my own voice asking for things.

Lord, the light was on the wall again this morning. I was here for it.