Epiphany In A Morning Routine

A year ago I started walking for an hour up on Mt. Tabor every weekday morning. I motivate myself with a cup of mocha at Rain or Shine Coffee House at the end of a week if I keep to the schedule. Not every week merits a cup and during the summer the garden lured me away from my routine, but even when my feet don't follow the path, my mind and heart remember the daily practice.

Through every type of weather - wind, downpour, snow, freezing or boiling temperatures - the routine has been the same. I leave the house sometimes as early as seven, walk West a few blocks on unimproved Taggert Street, cross Division at 60th, wind through the neighborhood to enter the park and follow the service road to the double reservoir. One lap around the reservoir is followed by a breathless 100+ step hike to the upper reservoir. My ultimate goal is the highest reservoir about 2/3 of the way up the mountain. This old reservoir is my "Altar in the World".

Reflected trees and sky dance among thousands of raindrops dotting smooth water, bird wings flutter, firs sigh - this hundred-year-old horseshoe shaped reservoir cradled in a bowl carved out of the south side of Mt. Tabor is sacred space for contemplation. It is a place to ponder the end of another year spent and the beginning of a new year to come. Walking here daily is a tonic of light, love, peace, and hope.

Last year soon after I started my morning routine I was reading Barbara Brown Taylor's book about "discovering the sacred in the small things we do and see" (An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith). The practices outlined there are deceptively simple. Finding the sacred in the ordinary transforms us.

Today I stopped for my mocha on the first day of the week to celebrate a year of walks. A funny thing happened - a friend I wanted to talk to (I'd never seen him there before) stopped by at the same moment. Yesterday was Epiphany (the coming of the Magi). Today was an epiphany experience (an intuitive grasp of reality through something, such as an event, usually simple and striking. Webster).

There is room for epiphany every day when we are awake and present in our lives.

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