why "day is a-breaking"?

I discovered Pandora a couple of months ago, and I've been creating "radio stations." My most eclectic station has all kinds of stuff on it now, and I like virtually all of it, especially now that I've added several doses of variety.

Every year our Easter sunrise Eucharist begins with our folk choir singing "Bright Morning stars are a-rising," and one guy who grew up in Mississippi sings the most beautiful, plaintive chorus: "...and day is a-breaking in my soul." It's cold and dark when we begin, and the sun usually comes up in the first half hour, often as geese honk and fly overhead.

I also recently heard Bright Morning Stars on Pandora, and then, in a characteristic stroke of brilliance, our organist decided this would be a fitting song for All Saints. He's absolutely correct.

When I hear this song, I find tears close to the surface, and sometimes feel a catch in my breathing, an incipient sigh. This song captures hope and longing and love and solidarity and the Communion of Saints in a haunting tune that stays in the heart like Holy Muzak.

So that is the name of this blog. Because I want to keep alive the hope that "day is a-breaking in my soul." Even when I feel the tug of cynicism, sloth, depression--3 overlapping states of being that I experience all too often. I long for the reign of God to break in my soul, the day when "mercy and truth will meet; righteousness and peace will kiss each other" (Psalm 85).