"Red in the Morning" (Text & Image Copyright Wylddane Productions, LLC)
...Ethan woke before dawn, the way he often did in January, when sleep felt too shallow to hold him and the dark pressed gently against the windows of his lakeside house. The world outside was hushed, suspended in that peculiar pre-morning stillness where even the trees seemed to be holding their breath.
He dressed quietly, layering wool and flannel, his movements practiced and unhurried. For years, his work as a spiritual scholar had taught him to observe...patterns of thought, cycles of fear and hope, the way meaning revealed itself only when one stopped demanding answers. His photography, a humble companion to his studies, had become another way of listening.
The lake lay frozen and pale beneath the stars, a wide sheet of silence stretching toward the horizon. Ethan stepped onto the snow-crusted path leading down to the shore, the cold biting but honest, sharpening his awareness. The world felt stripped to essentials: white snow, black trees, the low outline of distant woods.
Then...almost imperceptibly at first...the horizon shifted.
A thin seam of color opened where earth met sky, as if the morning itself had been gently cut open. Orange bled into fuchsia, then deepened, flaring brighter with each passing breath. The bare trees became silhouettes etched in fire. Shadows stretched long and blue across the snow. The frozen lake reflected the sky’s astonishment, doubling the miracle.
Ethan stood utterly still, his breath caught somewhere between awe and disbelief. He lifted his camera, hands trembling...not from the cold, but from the suddenness of beauty. He knew better than to chase permanence, yet he pressed the shutter anyway, honoring the moment as it was: brief, radiant, uncompromising.
And just as suddenly, it ended.
Clouds...heavy, patient, unseen until now...rolled in from the west. The colors drained away as if absorbed back into the sky. The light dulled, flattened, surrendered. Snow began to fall, thick and earnest, erasing the horizon, softening edges, returning the world to its familiar winter gray.
Ethan lowered his camera. A quiet disappointment stirred in him, but it did not take root.
He turned back toward the house as the snowfall deepened, the path already beginning to vanish behind him. Inside, the windows fogged gently with warmth. He set the camera down but did not review the images.
Instead, he opened his journal and began to write...not about the sunrise itself, but about what it had stirred.
The lesson, he realized, was not that light lasts...but that it arrives.
Unannounced. Undeniable.
And once seen, never entirely lost.
* * * * * * * * * *
Snow flurries drift past the window beside my desk, faint as whispers. It is still dark at this early hour, yet the world feels awake in its own quiet way. My coffee mug steams in my hands, the aroma grounding me in this moment. I pause. I sip.
The memory of that fiery sunrise lingers...Ethan’s sunrise, and now my own. My mother’s voice returns to me, as it often does with a sky like that: “Red in the morning, sailors take warning.” There is wisdom there...an acknowledgment that beauty can be a herald, not a promise.
These are unsettling times. There is fear, and there is grief, and there is the strange clarity that follows them both. Despair may arrive first...but determination need not be far behind. This is not who we are. This is not who I am.
Gabriel Okara’s words rise quietly within me:
“Rise and shine, O shine… like resplendent morning sun; open our hearts, our yearning hearts and receive the healing blessings.”
Hauser’s Benedictus drifts through the room, soft and spacious. Another sip of coffee. Another breath.
I am the white rose of resistance.
I am this moment.
I am now.
And so I begin this day...not demanding lasting light, but welcoming whatever illumination arrives, however briefly, with a yearning heart open to healing.
~Wylddane
He dressed quietly, layering wool and flannel, his movements practiced and unhurried. For years, his work as a spiritual scholar had taught him to observe...patterns of thought, cycles of fear and hope, the way meaning revealed itself only when one stopped demanding answers. His photography, a humble companion to his studies, had become another way of listening.
The lake lay frozen and pale beneath the stars, a wide sheet of silence stretching toward the horizon. Ethan stepped onto the snow-crusted path leading down to the shore, the cold biting but honest, sharpening his awareness. The world felt stripped to essentials: white snow, black trees, the low outline of distant woods.
Then...almost imperceptibly at first...the horizon shifted.
A thin seam of color opened where earth met sky, as if the morning itself had been gently cut open. Orange bled into fuchsia, then deepened, flaring brighter with each passing breath. The bare trees became silhouettes etched in fire. Shadows stretched long and blue across the snow. The frozen lake reflected the sky’s astonishment, doubling the miracle.
Ethan stood utterly still, his breath caught somewhere between awe and disbelief. He lifted his camera, hands trembling...not from the cold, but from the suddenness of beauty. He knew better than to chase permanence, yet he pressed the shutter anyway, honoring the moment as it was: brief, radiant, uncompromising.
And just as suddenly, it ended.
Clouds...heavy, patient, unseen until now...rolled in from the west. The colors drained away as if absorbed back into the sky. The light dulled, flattened, surrendered. Snow began to fall, thick and earnest, erasing the horizon, softening edges, returning the world to its familiar winter gray.
Ethan lowered his camera. A quiet disappointment stirred in him, but it did not take root.
He turned back toward the house as the snowfall deepened, the path already beginning to vanish behind him. Inside, the windows fogged gently with warmth. He set the camera down but did not review the images.
Instead, he opened his journal and began to write...not about the sunrise itself, but about what it had stirred.
The lesson, he realized, was not that light lasts...but that it arrives.
Unannounced. Undeniable.
And once seen, never entirely lost.
* * * * * * * * * *
Snow flurries drift past the window beside my desk, faint as whispers. It is still dark at this early hour, yet the world feels awake in its own quiet way. My coffee mug steams in my hands, the aroma grounding me in this moment. I pause. I sip.
The memory of that fiery sunrise lingers...Ethan’s sunrise, and now my own. My mother’s voice returns to me, as it often does with a sky like that: “Red in the morning, sailors take warning.” There is wisdom there...an acknowledgment that beauty can be a herald, not a promise.
These are unsettling times. There is fear, and there is grief, and there is the strange clarity that follows them both. Despair may arrive first...but determination need not be far behind. This is not who we are. This is not who I am.
Gabriel Okara’s words rise quietly within me:
“Rise and shine, O shine… like resplendent morning sun; open our hearts, our yearning hearts and receive the healing blessings.”
Hauser’s Benedictus drifts through the room, soft and spacious. Another sip of coffee. Another breath.
I am the white rose of resistance.
I am this moment.
I am now.
And so I begin this day...not demanding lasting light, but welcoming whatever illumination arrives, however briefly, with a yearning heart open to healing.
~Wylddane
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