a sunrise on my way to orlando

I'm in Orlando right now at the American Diabetes Association meeting, where I'm learning about continuous glucose monitors, how health care reform will impact diabetes prevention and treatment, and how close we are to creating an artificial pancreas.

{I like how I say "we," as if I'm in the lab with the researchers.  As a medical writer, I'm really more of a cheerleader, if cheerleaders exist in research labs.}

That may all sound very dull to you, but it's not to me, which is good, considering it's my job to be excited about it.

On my way to Orlando on Friday, I made this list called Thoughts I Had on My Way to Orlando.  A very clear name for a list, as list names should always be.

Thought #1:

Actually seeing the sun rise makes my heart and mind do the same thing:  rest in thankfulness for a moment of the divine.  In the car to O’Hare, I got to watch the sun shoot over the horizon.

It didn’t matter that squat buildings—auto shops, Dunkin’ Donuts, Target, a strip club—were in the foreground, blocking part of this bright fire of a morning routine.  You think perfect sunrise moments are on lakes or oceans, in mountains, or with you family.  But in reality, with the sun climbing over the horizon one more time, every sunrise is its own perfect, no matter where you are.

The sunrise, no matter where I see it, makes me think of Mary Oliver's "Morning Poem."  Read it.  Actually, I'll put it in here.  It's that important of a poem.  To me.

And maybe someday, I'll write a poem that makes me feel the way this poem does:  hopeful, bursting with imagination, in awe of the great and small details of our world.

Morning Poem 

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches—
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it

the thorn
that is heavier than lead—
if it's all you can do
to keep on trudging—

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted—

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.