The kitchen clock reads 4:18 a.m. I hear the tick … tick as the oven preheats to 350 degrees. The flour, salt, and baking powder stir to life as I add olive oil and water into my mixing bowl.

“Rise, and be beautiful,” I say to the mass of dough which I knead and flour, knead and caress with fingers and palms.

Today, working simple ingredients into bread dough is my first conscious act of the day, before dawn, before Morning Prayer, before I brew my steamy mug of coffee.

The dough comes alive. Bread is a living thing, and beautiful to the eye, to the taste, to the body, to the soul.

“Rise, and be beautiful,” I say to the still sleeping world at the close of Morning Prayer as I step out my door, safe under the eave as intense spring rain pours down.

To the east I detect the first hint of dawn through the blanket of cloud. I breathe deeply of the rain-washed air as I pray my intercessions. And I behold the world in all its springtime freshness, bursting with possibility. 

I say to Brother Sun, which I am pretty sure I won’t see today, “Rise, and be beautiful,” now as Earth rotates to receive his light and warmth above this blanket of cloud.

From under my eave I think, too, of the world’s anguish. The many forms of anguish that were never meant to be, born of injustice and neglect, greed and abandonment of every sort, deforming and diminishing what was created for loveliness, and fruitfulness, and the flourishing of life.

It’s this world I have in mind now as I pray, “Rise, and be beautiful.” I yearn to nudge this world into a place of promise, and faithfulness to promise, and peace.

The rain eases some. To the west I see clouds grow thin, now gauzy. The Morning Star emerges in the fresh-washed sky. Overhead I hear swallows in their liquidy chweet … chweet, swooping and soaring in search of breakfast.

Rise, and be beautiful.

I need—and I mean I deeply, deeply need—the beauty of this spring. I yearn for beauty to free me of the chaos and fear and division of the times in which I live, free of the spirit of unsettledness and confusion that seem to shape our days, alone and together.

I need the beauty of my favorite plum tree to minister to my soul. I need the beauty of my neighbor’s lilac blooms cascading in fragrant clusters over the fence.

I need the beauty of birds busy in the nesting season, Mother and Father Towhee who hide in the lavender bush, the community of golden crown sparrows who perch in the hedge of mock orange and wild roses.

“In the end we will be saved by beauty,” Dorothy Day often noted, recalling a line from Dostoevsky.

I want to be saved now.

I want all Creation to rightly praise the Creator. I want this kind of world, where praise is free to rise up from all the Earth.

Rise, I say, rise, and be beautiful.