looking out the window

The clouds hold an edge of pink overhead this morning as I write. Most days of late I’ve been waking after the sun, but today we got up around the same time. I raised the blinds on the window in my back door just in time to catch an orange glimmer out behind the garage.

I love windows. I want to be one of those people who sit and look out their window everyday first thing to have a think. There’s a lot of things that I want to be. And first thing in the morning, toward the beginning of a year, much of it feels possible.

In a way that’s beautiful, but I have a conflicted relationship with too much possibility.

I look out the window in the morning and think of everything along the horizon that rests and wrestles between me and the rising sun. If I spray my attention out to the east it covers all of Portland, those of my neighbors trying to keep their businesses alive, those trying to make for themselves a new community, those in need of shelter, in need of a job, in need of purpose, in need of an encouraging encounter. My attention moves further east and stretches across the Atlantic and envelopes our globe. My attention roots through war and threats of war, through fire and devastation for a glimpse of the rising sun.

I wonder how I can have the greatest impact in the largest swath of the world. The promise in a fresh moment of time tends to tangle up with the urgency of my ambition and the overwhelm of the world’s needs. I’m stuck here trying to comb through it all.

Being stuck here is the thing that I want to avoid. I want to start my days looking out the window. But I don’t want to spend my days looking out the window. At some point I’ll go outside, I’ll pick a direction and move in it. And I’ll do what I can with the moments I have to be like the clouds holding an edge of radiance to share with those I encounter.