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morning on St. Cecilia is the birds. The second thing you hear is the drone of the fishing boats down in the straits as they head off to the fishing grounds.
    When you hear the birds and you hear the boats, then you know first light is coming, and if you want to see the show, then it is time to get moving.

    Wherever I am, at home in Tennessee, or on the road working at a conference or retreat, or down here in the islands, I like to begin my day at first light. Some of God’s best work is done around sunrise, and I hate to miss it.
    On the island I tiptoe around Seastone, the cottage we like the best, gathering up coffee and a prayer book and a sketchbook and a pen and a lapboard, and go tosit down by the pool, cross-legged on a chair. I call this the scribbling round.
    Many years of beginning my day when the day is beginning have taught me that the lady I live with prefers to let the day be a little farther along before it disturbs her. I like listening and watching as it whispers and blinks and stretches itself to life. She prefers to sleep until everything is already purring along nicely.

    For all of that, I have never actually seen the sun come up out of the sea on St. Cecilia. The sun pulls its way up from the Atlantic side, the windward side of the island, back behind us. Back where the beaches are rocky and wild and windblown, where the surf pounds its way to shore after the long run from Africa, where the trade winds that bring gentle breezes to our side of the island can blow you over if you are not holding on tight to something. But all of that is hidden by the long hillbehind Seastone. The cottage faces north and west, looking over the straits toward St. Catherine and down over a quiet strand into the placid waters of a bay beyond which is the place where the sun slips into the sea each evening. We are along a cliff about 150 feet above the water, looking down onto a stone beach and then out into the straits.
    The way the cottage lays into the hill you cannot see the sun itself until ten o’clock or so. What you can see during the scribbling round is the way the sun lights up the sky in front of you to the west, sending out long fingers of pink and red. You can watch it begin to burn off the mist that keeps you from seeing St. Catherine and down the coast of St. Cecilia.
    You can watch as the direct light from the climbing sun begins to back its way toward you. First down the side of the hill across the bay, lighting up the houses that run down its side, turning them from dark and gray to bright and colorful. The line of the light keeps backing across the bay toward you, turning the water in the cove from green and dark to gold and blue.
    The light from the sun keeps coming at you until suddenly you notice you are sitting in full sunlight. That is how you know the scribbling round is over.

    Sara’s first task in the morning is to feed her flock. She has either been adopted by, or managed to adopt, a crowd of small birds who nest in the tree by the porch railing. If you leave the doors open, they will come on in and head for the kitchen and make themselves at home. It is possible they own the house and someone neglected to tell us.
    Sara begins her mornings with coffee and something to read and a bite of breakfast, no matter where we are. On St. Cecilia she gathers up her things and heads out to the porch. It takes about six minutes tops for the birds to show up along the railing, looking to see what is on offer for breakfast.
    These are small birds, about the size of house finches. St. Cecilians call them sugarbirds. In general,being a bird means being on the go constantly, as near as I can figure, and it is especially true of sugarbirds. The name itself suggests a clue as to why they are so hyperactive—too much sugar in anything that small leads to a great deal of yapping and crashing about. Anyone who has ever been around small children can testify to the often startling behavior changes in normally