One of the two most spectacular sunrises I have ever seen …
I am not a collector of things, but I do love to frame beautiful scenes and moments in my mind, and when possible, with my camera at the ready, I take the shot.
Sunrises and early mornings are at the top of my ‘shot’ list and I’ve had seven decades in which to experience them. Being from Australia and having traveled all over the world, I have experienced them in an untold number of settings on most continents, and while criss-crossing the USA on many occasions. I have even experienced dawn from the top of 20,000 foot high, Mount Kilimanjaro. Yet, the two most dazzling and memorable sunrises both occurred, curiously, barrelling along the Interstate 80 at 80 miles an hour, in Indiana, USA.
Recently, trucking along at 80 mph, heading due east on Interstate 80, I looked up from my all night driving vigil, encountering the most mesmerizing oranges and reds gathering at the horizon. Every photographer and filmmaker knows that morning light is mercurial and fleeting, that morning light is cooler than evening, and that the perfect light in the morning lasts moments, not minutes.
Even though the picture above is beautiful, and those were the exact colors of the sunrise, I was still late too late to get the shot I could see building as I traveled the highway. Unfortunately, the very best moment had already come and gone. I’d had to find an exit from the I-80 and then travel miles along dirt roads beside endless farms to get to a country crossroads where there was a reasonable vantage point. I took a few frames of the setting above, glad to have those images, and the experience, but thinking I had missed perfection, again.
Then, as I later pondered the experience, a new “keeper” thought arose.
Sometimes, the right thing to do is to hold the line in life — don’t be distracted by side issues, don’t think about what you didn’t do or what you left behind — just think about now and where you’re going. Hold the line. But. That’s not always true.
Sometimes, to experience the sacred or the profound, one has to step aside, even stop. Moses had to “turn aside” from his shepherding duties in order to experience the greater thing that reshaped his life and undertake a new mission, the results of which echo down through the ages —
“Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father in law, the priest of Midian: and he led the flock to the backside of the desert, and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb. And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed. And Moses said, I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt. And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I. And he said, Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.” (KJV Exodus 3:1-5)
Up until this time, it would appear, Moses had experienced God somewhat secondhand, through his father in law, Jethro. None of us have the calling of a Moses, but we do have the chance to experience the profound, to experience God firsthand along our journey of life. When the moment calls, when the opportunity arises, taking the path less traveled or taking the slower way to our destination is the very best thing we can do. Take the nearest exit, stop, and ponder the beauty and message of the moment. There and then, perhaps even more than when we are following the straight line of duty, (a) we get a chance to experience and acknowledge God’s splendor, and (b) if called for, realign our trajectory with the new, inspired, perspective. We all need to be ready to encounter and respond to our own versions of a burning bush moment. In the end, the destination is not some fleeting goal of our own design. The destination is God’s full presence.
In the instance of the first image, a sunrise in Indiana, turning aside only cost me an hour of time. Sometimes the import is much greater, for, as C.S. Lewis asserts in Mere Christianity and other chronicles, “the longest way round, is the shortest way home.”1
Sunrise Sunset, from Fiddler on the Roof
Sunrise, sunset Sunrise, sunset
Is this the little girl I carried? Is this the little boy at play? I don't remember growing older When did they?
When did she get to be a beauty? When did he grow to be so tall? Wasn't it yesterday that they were small?
Sunrise, sunset Sunrise, sunset Swiftly flow the days Seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers Blossoming even as they gaze
Sunrise, sunset Sunrise, sunset Swiftly fly the years One season following another Laden with happiness and tears One season following another Laden with happiness and tears
Sunrise, sunset Sunrise, sunset
“Sunrise Sunset” performed by Perry Como
- The quote herein references C.S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity and other works. “The longest way round is the shortest way home,” is also attributed to James Joyce, Ulysses, and others. ↩︎
