Since the time change, I’ve been up well before dawn. It’s not my usual routine. But I’ve felt such a draw to being up to watch the day come in, that I’ve just been going with it. Every morning something unexpected happens; from deep insights about Life, to amazing encounters with Nature.

One morning, as I watched the sky turn into the most amazing gold and rose tones, all streaking across my view, it occurred to me that this was A New Day. Not in the obvious sense, as in, not yesterday, but in the largest sense of all. A brand new opportunity to be alive. A chance to do my life anew. An offer to experience what I have never experienced before.

A blank slate where anything and everything, could happen. A moment in time where I knew that that “anything and everything” possible was all up to me. And it felt good. 

But of course, the reason we don’t experience A New Day is because we think, speak and do in the same ways over and over and over again. Every single day. Our reactions to what Life brings us? The same. The words we use to talk to ourselves? The same. The habits we engage in? The same.

The enemy of A New Day will always be the refusal to let go of what we’ve been doing. In effect, the unwillingness to reconsider ourselves and our beliefs. And it will always be our fear of the unknown. Of not knowing what is going to happen. Which is why we so often double-down on what we have always done. Especially when things in our life or in the outer world get shaky, chaotic or frightening.

But as we find ourselves in such accelerated times of change, something more than just doing what we have always done, is being called for. That something more is surrender. A yielding to the Reality of the moment that has nothing to do with anything other than moving with What Is.

Just as the leaves are doing now as they release effortlessly to the season in their complete and total alignment with What Is.

We will move through many, many seasons in the years to come. Shall we act as if there is only one season? Or will we open ourselves to meeting what comes without resistance? And while many of our minds might go to a kind of “grinning and bearing it” mentality, a kind of hunkering down or sucking it up, this state of mind will never suffice. It will never be big enough to hold the possibility of A New Day. Nothing about “hanging on for the ride” will ever be magnificent enough to take our lives into a New Dawn.

If this lands, each morning as you start your day, offer up as a sacrifice your old self and your old ways. Speak to the dawn a prayer for What Might Be.