On sunrise rituals, small acts of care, and finding light in dark times.

A (mid)weekly blessing for all who resist.

Photo by Aaron Burden .

Dear fellow pilgrim,

After a nasty cold has brought us all down this week, this (mid)weekly blessing arrives a bit late.

But just as any blessing might, this blessing took its time to find its way to you.

And, just like the sun, which sometimes comes a little later than expected, perhaps it’s just as the light meets you—right when you need it most. So here we go:

On Monday, I did something extraordinary. Revolutionary almost. Life-changing even.

I watched the sunrise.

I know, I know, you might be doing this every morning. But you see, I most often try to catch a few more moments of sleep when dawn breaks. Or I’m busy getting my kindergartener out of bed. Or I simply forget to look out the window.

So last Monday just felt like the right day—an historic choice, for sure—to get up, walk through our quiet home to the small sunroom at the back of the house, and watch as daylight crept in behind the trees in the garden.

It was cold, so I turned on the small electric heater. I ventured back into the warmer kitchen to make a cup of coffee, still watching out the back window. Filling the pot, turning the switch, spooning the beans, pouring the water—it all felt like a humble choreography. The bubbling of water mingled with the winter wind blowing around the house. The quiet of our sleeping home was interrupted only by the heater humming back to life.

I took my cup of coffee and walked through our living area, peeking out each window.

I realized we have windows. Not just one, but many. I walked by the heater vents and stood for a moment in the warm air flow. I cradled my cup of coffee and realized: we have heating.

Back in the sunroom, which had warmed up a bit, I thought how strange it was to stand here in my woolen morning robe, looking out into subzero temperatures.

The sky was now lit with subtle colors, and the dark of the night had almost disappeared. The warm coffee melted in my mouth and warmed my sleepy throat. I watched the frozen garden: patches of snow covering some areas but not all—a rarity for this time of year—and bare branches moving gently. It was like watching life frozen into a still life, a painting by an unknown artist.

Then I sat down at my pretty table, opened my pretty journal, and started a pretty gratitude list.

Of course not. I didn’t. I don’t have a pretty journal. Actually, I do—but I save them in drawers or on shelves somewhere and scribble on loose papers instead (are you in my tribe?).

And well, I’m also not doing gratitude lists.

But I did this sunrise. And it filled me with what one could probably call a sense of warmth and peace and gratitude—for the home I have, for the heater that quite literally decides between life and death in these frozen landscapes of the Midwest midwinter.

I felt a sense of gratitude and survivor’s guilt holding hands as I thought of mothers under rubble and families who have lost their homes to raging fires or war.

I tried to cradle in my heart those children who don’t wake up in warm homes with loving parents nearby.

Because what can we do in this world of crazy, where toxic masculinity has won the day and money seems to rule every bit of the public sphere?

We resist.

And so, we light our small fires of care.
We cradle a cup of coffee and notice the warmth.
We look out our windows and let the light of dawn
seep into our tired eyes.
We keep alive the rituals that soften
the sharp edges of the world:
watching the sunrise, pausing for a breath,
entering the cosmic realm of the living breath.

These acts may seem insignificant against the vastness of the world’s pain, but I believe they are courageous acts of defiance against despair. I hope they not only mask our resignation but strengthen us to do what is right. They are acts of faith in life’s capacity to endure, to heal, to grow again—even in frozen soil.

And now, my fellow pilgrims,

• what are your small acts of hopeful defiance?

• How do you assert, nurture, claim hope in small acts in your day?

I would love to have your help in creating a fine collection of hopeful defiance to inspire each other. Thank you for sharing and commenting or responding to this letter :-)

Here, dear one, is a blessing for you and your next dawn:

A Blessing for the Dawn

May you find
stillness
in the quiet hours
before the day
begins.
May the first rays of
light
remind you of the
beauty that comes
with each new beginning.

May hope rise in your heart
as surely as the sun rises
on the horizon.
And may you carry the
peace of this moment
with you,
wherever the day takes you.

AF—-

With much blessings, Almut

Upcoming

There are several projects in the pipeline. I am looking forward to our Winter Solitude at the end of February, a virtual mini retreat as a thank you for our paid subscribers.

I am also looking forwward to (re)introduce you in the next weeks to the different writings of our Cloister Notes publication: Our reguallr brief midweek blessings (as this one), our monthly essays “On Being Human”, which are reflections in the intersection of philosophy, psychology and spirituality, our sporadic “Letters to America,” where I share some autobiographical insides from growing up behind the Iron Curtain; and some more new things coming up.

Missing something? Let me know what you like to read here <3

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In case you missed it

On ice flowers, temper tantrums, and what I learned from MLK about being human:

The pilgrimage blues and the peeling of Self: A conversation between Kierkegaard and Richard Rohr.

Beyond Epiphany: Reading the wise (Wo)men journey inwardly with Hildegard of Bingen.

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About Almut

Almut Furchert, Dr. phil., Dipl. Psych. is a German American scholar and practitioner, a psychologist turned philosopher turned writer, traveler, photographer, retreat leader and mother of a kindergartener. She has taught and published on authors like Kierkegaard, Buber, Frankl, Yalom, Edith Stein, and Hildegard of Bingen. Almut is also a Benedictine Oblate and lives with her family in a little college town in MN.

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