NDND (New Dawn New Day)

A new dawn, a new day. Getting up really early, before first light happens to be my favorite part of the day. I realize I'm probably in the minority here. I can't really explain it but being up and aware at the very crack of a new day, experiencing that intense stillness before dawn...it centers and energizes me. It always has in a way but now even more so.How can one gain energy from the quiet stillness of early morning? I'm not sure but I know that I feel so in tune with everything happening inside me as well as around me. My awareness sharpens and I enjoy experiencing life that focused in on what's happening at that moment.

That can happen for me at other times of the day as well but I seem to be more able to focus early in the morning. Perhaps just the lack of distractions but I have always found my own brain to be my biggest distraction so it really shouldn't matter what time of day it is....

Any way, now that I'm, all fired up and focused in I'm ready to begin my Monday. I'm excited because I get to attend a presentation today by one of my favorite current authors: Bich Minh Nguyen. She wrote "Stealing Buddha's Dinner" which is a wonderfully written memoir on her growing up as a young immigrant in Grand Rapids MI after her family had to flee Viet Nam after the fall of Saigon in the Mid Seventies. It's a great storie written from the perspective of a young girl who is experiencing a whole new world...she might have just as well landed on Mars.

 I was drawn to it originally because she was from Grand Rapids. I spent 25 years in Holland MI which is near by and worked with quite a few of the Vietnamese refugees who came here just as her family did. So it added a unique opportunity to see the world from their perspective coming from a Buddhist world to the world of the Christian Reformed Dutch who were the majority presence in that area then and now. It was a class to two distinctly different cultures and I found it facinating at the time and I still do today.