3:00 AM

I think I've seldom met a 3:00 AM that I didn't like.

Well, there was the 3:00 AM when my father died.... And there have been the odd 3:00 AMs spent in a hospital waiting room, the hours of pensive tedium waiting stretching on.... Or a friend calling in tears, awakening me from sound sleep...a heartbreak in his family.... And even these 3:00 AMs, which I did not choose, but were forced upon me, have their certain wistfulness now in memory....

But many is the 3:00 AM I have chosen and do choose. It may start in the quiet of a darkened living room or study, a warm beverage cradled in the hand, and thought beginning to take form and shape as sleep recedes...and then out into the darkness and stillness....

When I lived and studied at Saint John's, on the shores of Sagatagan, 3:00 AM would sometimes catch me--too often perhaps--at my studies. I would take a break and walk out beside the lake in the darkness. The woods around the lake would be utterly still in the darkness. The stillness away from cities--especially at night--is palpable and striking, especially if it has been too long since one has stood in it. In winter it seems even more intensified...like it is more than a natural phenomena, but rather like a real presence upon the landscape. That long winter at Saint John's sometimes I would walk out onto the ice in the darkness, on a clear night perhaps even lay down out there on the ice and stare up at immensity, and tiny twinkling lights filling it. Immensity above me, an icy depth under me, a presence of stillness pressing all around me....

But speaking of 3:00 AM, the city--my city--is a different place in the still hours of darkness. You will never find at any time in the city the immensity of stillness that one finds in country or wilderness, but in the wee hours after the stragglers have closed the bars and gone home...there is a stillness there that few of the city's inhabitants ever feel. And in its way, it is beauty.... Because of my particular brand of employment, I see this side of the city on most days of the week, and it is truly one of the things I treasure about my present urban life. Driving these nearly deserted streets in darkness is another "prayer," another meditation, like another sit in the woods by the great river running through this city.

Many is the 3:00 AM I have chosen and do choose. It may start in the quiet of a darkened living room or study, a warm beverage cradled in the hand, and thought beginning to take form and shape as sleep recedes...and then out into the darkness and stillness.... And on this morning I walk out into the darkness to snow. The first significant snowfall of the season. Only two to three inches, not a major storm, but still enough to blanket everything in white and utterly transform a landscape. I make the usual drive. On a couple of the smaller streets, my tire tracks are the first to break the perfect white covering. Now on one of the main arteries of the city I am alone. If I wished to stop and sit in the middle of this boulevard I could do so undisturbed.... Now, in the distance a pair of headlights appears. And now I pass a lone bundled figure standing at the bus stop. These also know the city in this dark, white, and still dress....

My destination is a building just beside the river. I decide to walk out onto the bridge in the falling snow and the darkness. In the middle of the bridge I stand for a bit, the dark water flowing under me, and the snow falling in silence...and for a moment, even this city night approaches the immensity of a big winter night sky in the woods....