Morning glory

Whisper it very softly, but, after a June heatwave followed by a damp, disappointing July, we're currently - finally! - enjoying an ordinary summer. There are still some storms and showers, but on the whole the days are pleasantly, comfortably warm, and mostly sunny, and the nights are mild. Nature has responded, with ripening fruit, and plants enjoying their final, pre-autumn flowering. A few surprise blooms have appeared in the garden, while my neighbour's jasmine has sniffed the air, and decided to bless it with more perfume from some newly-opened flowers. 

On such bright, clear days, their gradual shortening is barely noticeable. At the moment the sun rises about seventy minutes before I do, its ascent well under way by the time I get up. I go to the east-facing living room, stepping into a golden cavern: the importuning sun, desperate to be admitted, is bursting through a gap in the curtains, whose pale neutrality has been turned into bronze. Drawing back the curtains dispels the golden glow, but allows the sun to flood through, and immediately onto plants, gilding green leaves and turning paper-thin petals translucent. 

It is a sight of which I will never tire. Gladioli, sunflowers... daffodils in spring... all are rendered delicate and diaphanous, carriers of a light which both bleaches and brightens them, and reveals their deepest, inner selves. And some lines from Gerard Manley Hopkins come to me, from a poem about Mary,

... who
This one work has to do—
Let all God’s glory through,
God's glory which would go
Through her and from her flow...

And as I gaze and marvel and delight in this simple, daily miracle, the thought and the desire weaves itself into my morning prayer... would that I too could spend today letting all God's glory through...!