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On Saturday, June 11, 2011, International Space Station astronaut Ron Garan used a high definition camera to film one of the sixteen sunrises astronauts see each day. This image shows the rising sun as the station flew along a path between Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and Buenos Aires, Argentina. http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_2047.html
The Sun
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Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful
than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon
and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone–
and how it slides again
out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower
streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance–
and have you ever felt for anything
such wild love–
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure
that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you
as you stand there,
empty-handed–
or have you too
turned from this world–
or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?
I love, love, love my work. Have loved it for a long, long time. Absolutely know that there is nothing I would rather do. And yet, at times (like right now), I wonder about the sanity of myprofession. When yet another piece of paperwork comes across my desk. When the district website, where I am supposed to enter data that is due on Monday, goes down for the umpteenth time in the last two weeks. When we have to give up another day of instruction to give yet another assessment that tells us something we already know. This poem, from Parker J. Palmer's website, spoke to me this morning about my place in the universe.
