What We Have is Today

Now that it’s spring, when I sit in the morning dark, I can often hear birds singing. I think of them waking with song, their voices rising in the darkness, their faith that the light will shine again. For them, it’s instinct, the time of year when everything comes alive again, including them. They have so much to look forward to: nest building and baby making, tending their own square inches of home. They don’t ask questions or wonder if maybe they should be doing something else. They are just doing their bird things and waking each morning with song.

I wake while it’s still dark and head to the couch where I sip coffee and read. I’ve been reading a Lenten devotional first thing every morning while I wait for the coffee to be ready. Some mornings, the devotional reading hits me between the eyes, a reminder of Jesus’s grief and humanity, how much God loved him and how, for a moment God turned away and it tore Jesus apart. It was for the greater good, of course, but even the worst of our human abandonment or rejection pales in comparison. No one was as close as Jesus and God.

Other mornings, I can’t quite get my mind around the day’s passage. The words feel obscure, the concepts intangible. It might be my own grogginess, but not every passage resonates. Some of them float away as soon as my eyes leave the page.

I get up, pour my cup of coffee, and walk back to the couch. I once had a friend ask me what was my favorite part of my day. She and I had taken to writing letters, both of us with small children underfoot. We’d gone to college together and knew each other a little bit, then reconnected a few years later online. My response to her question was easy: that first sip of coffee in the morning. That was my favorite part of the day.

Back then I didn’t have much of a morning routine, or any routine at all really. I was still feeling my way through new motherhood, having just gotten my bearings with one kid then upending everything by adding another. My days were predictably unpredictably, but coffee was surely on the docket every day.

Of course, making coffee and drinking it is a daily ritual and rituals are there to help anchor us down, to keep us from floating away. It was when my kids were small that I realized I liked mornings and didn’t want to waste them lolling around in bed. Being awake in the quiet while the sun is coming up and the earth is coming alive again became my favorite time of day. It was peaceful, hopeful. Having coffee in hand on a quiet morning was a sign that everything was going to be all right.

While I’m sipping my coffee, I pull out my journal and write for a few minutes. It’s a habit I’ve picked up in recent years. I wasn’t much of a journal keeper when my kids were little. I didn’t do much writing at all then. Instead, I taught myself how to shoot a DSLR and channeled all my creative energy into photographing everything. I wanted to learn to see, to really pay attention to what was around me and what was within me. Photography taught me to slow down. It showed me what it meant to focus on the present moment.

Eventually, I found my way back to words and started writing in a journal every morning, a way to sort through my emotional life and what I’m thinking about. When I take time to write something down, I know I’m really paying attention.

Journaling usually doesn’t get me anywhere in particular. I write observations and mull over questions, the same questions over and over. I parse out my thoughts, but don’t necessarily arrive at answers. Writing helps me think, and that thinking has become just as important as that first cup of hot coffee.

I’ve taken heed of Rilke’s advice to “learn to love the questions.” I’m a questioner at heart. I’ve always loved the questions. And, though I have a propensity to ask why a million times, I’ve learned to ask better questions. I’ve also learned to accept that there aren’t always answers, not easy ones at least.

I know Rilke understands. He says, “Learn to love the questions.” And also: “Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything.”

Love the questions. Live the questions.

I listen to the morning birdsong and it occurs to me that birds don’t ask questions. Sometimes I wish I could be more bird-like, more accepting of the way it is, more present-moment focused. I’d like to rise in the morning with a song and go about my daily tasks. I’d like to worry less. Sometimes I think I’d like a quieter life, a smaller one. But questions arise inside me, the kind that are complex and nuanced, the kind that remind me I’m not a bird. I pin them to the page, trust that they’re doing their work on me.

Eventually, the sun starts to rise, but I have to go to the other side of the house to see it. I stand at the kitchen sink, pour another cup of coffee. The sun is a tiny pinch of orange through the trees, another sign of spring. Each day, it rises slightly north of the day before, moving further left in the backyard. When it rises, the light will shine directly into the back of the house.

Am I paying attention?

The birds are still singing. They haven’t flitted away yet to go about their business. We’re waiting together, a ritual to start the day. I take a deep breath and another sip of coffee. What we have is today: us, the birds, the entire world. We don’t know about tomorrow or a million tomorrows after that. We have today and know today. We can ask questions, but we likely won’t get answers, not to what or why or when.

There’s only today. We have to live everything.