Very Early in the Morning on the First Day of the Week

On Friday morning, we wake about 4:30 without the help of an alarm clock. In our household, we refer to the time as "dog-thirty" and sometimes "cat-thirty" as we live with two small editions of the former and one of the latter.

We wake and rise between 4:30 and 5:00 most mornings, and we are in bed about 8:30 to 9:00 most evenings. Without knowing quite how it has happened, we find ourselves on a schedule that would be at home in a monastery - although one that skipped Matins (also called Vigil), which takes place at 2:00 in the morning. Sometimes we wake briefly at that hour, and usually return to sleep.

This schedule is quite a change from the one I kept in college and for years thereafter as a newspaper copy editor. That is a schedule that was admittedly very difficult the year I was working nights on the copy desk and caring for my newborn and toddler during the day. I now refer to 1999 as the Year That I Forgot. 

At the same time, I feel increasingly blessed that at 52, with a husband approaching 64, our lives benefit in uncounted ways from choosing to keep this schedule.

This morning, five days removed from the Festival of the Resurrection, also known as Easter Sunday, my husband puts down kibble for the animals while I give them fresh water. While he starts the coffee, I go to the front of the house and draw back the curtains. 

I no longer wait until daylight to open the curtains, to turn off the porch light, to turn off the low lamp we leave burning at night in the front room. In a sense, opening the curtains, retrieving the morning newspaper from the driveway, signals to the household members as well as to anyone outside the house that we are awake.

Is that risky? Maybe. Maybe not. We keep the door locked, and we can see if someone is approaching. This morning, I am not contemplating risk. Rather, with the empty tomb so fresh in my heart because of the day's proximity to Easter Sunday, I am reminded, powerfully, of the Scriptures we have heard so many times. 

Very early in the morning on the first day of the week, while it was still dark.

The women approached the tomb. Which women? Gospel accounts vary. But all are consistent that very early on that day, the women did as women have always done, across religions, around the world, in households everywhere at all times: they rose at 0-dear-it's-early, maybe even before dog-thirty, to go and love someone they loved who had died. And everything followed after.