Night Owl

Despite many years of early morning seminary, work, and attempts of going to bed to early, I have always been a night owl. I have had many people protest that no one is truly a night owl.  Others have insisted that their biological clock is just set for the wee hours of the night.  In all honesty, I never saw much point in either opinion.  Those who say no one is a night owl often have little trouble sleeping and are content with their lives wholly in the daylight.  Those who protest they could never be a day person make a choice.  Taking meds, choosing to go to bed earlier, watching a little less TV, and they could easily be a daylighter too.  Most people don't understand the call of the night.  It is a very dark time when no one is awake and your head is aching.  There's nowhere to go and little to do. 

Teenagers and single adults have a better grasp of what the night is supposed to be about.  They see it as opportunity to hide in the darkness and do things perhaps not quite so sociably acceptable during the daylight.  They seize opportunity and try, just for awhile, to forget their trials and find fun and acceptance.

But even they don't completely understand.  After all, the night is a mistress of contrast.  Although she revels in fantasy, she is harsh in her truth.  I am a night owl, not because I choose to be, but because I am irrepressibly drawn to it.  At night, I can indulge in all possibility and opportunity.  I can go anywhere and be anyone.

It is also easier to be truthful with yourself in the night.  You can't hide yourself away.  When the only things surrounding you are the cloak of darkness and the night sky overhead, there is no place to hide from the truth of what's inside you.  Sleep is the only escape for that, and even it is a fleeting one.

Nighttime for me is also a time of contemplation.  It is a time of pondering and a time of silence.  Often, secrets are revealed at night.  As the long, harsh day comes to close, gentle night is waiting for the silence to lower your barriers and expose those things you can't show to anyone else.  Living in a large family, and then with five roommates, the only time I get to myself is after midnight.  

On top of this, there are many irreplaceable experiences at 2 a.m..  Silent moments between yourself and God.  Resolutions that can change your life, hopes and dreams that bring you comfort... and often a really bad headache when you wake up the next morning.

To finish, I would like to quote Henry W. Longfellow's "Hymn to the Night."

I heard the trailing garments of the Night

Sweep through her marble halls!

I saw her sable skirts all fringed with light

From the celestial walls!

I felt her presence, by it spell of might,

Stoop o'er me from above;

The calm, majestic presence of the Night,

As of the one I love.

I heard the sounds of sorrow and delight,

The manifold, soft chimes,

That fill the haunted chambers of the Night,

Like some old poet's rhymes.

From the cool cisterns of the midnight air

My spirit drank repose;

The fountain of perpetual peace flows there, --

From those deep cisterns flows.

O holy Night! from thee I learn to bear

What man has borne before!

Thou layest thy finger on the lips of Care

And they complain no more.

Peace! Peace! Orestes-like I breathe this prayer!

Descend with broad-winged flight,

The welcome, the thrice-prayed for, the most fair,

The best-beloved Night!