Cat Stevens’ Morning Has Broken plays in my head every once in awhile. I heard it last night.

Morning has broken like the first morning
Blackbird has spoken like the first bird
Praise for the singing
Praise for the morning
Praise for them springing fresh from the Word Sweet the rain’s new fall, sunlit from heaven
Like the first dew fall on the first grass
Praise for the sweetness of the wet garden
Sprung in completeness where His feet passMine is the sunlight
Mine is the morning
Born of the One Light Eden saw play
Praise with elation, praise every morning…

The song has a message for these times. The world as we knew doesn’t seem to be working any more. Covid-19 had us stopped in our tracks. We were in a lockdown, in a frozen moment. We could change. We had to change. So why are we back to what was even worse than before? Why are we so stupid about wearing a mask, keeping social distance and gathering within safe numbers? They seem simple enough to do, especially when our lives depend on compliance.

We were already masking up before the Covid. It’s not like it is a new phenomenon. Medical staff wear them in their work. Farmers wear them to protect them from grain dust and pesticides. Many labourers wear them in their jobs to protect their respiratory system from crap. Now we all need to wear them to protect our lives. So what is the problem? When the gathering was restricted to 12 people in a household, why does someone have a party of 50 people? So today’s Covid news in Saskatchewan is 2 deaths and 181 new cases. Our population is only a little over a million.

I’m losing my direction of where I am going here. It is late afternoon. The sun not only has gone, it never showed up at all today. I’m feeling a little dour. It is temporary. What I really want to impart is that this is the moment for us to change. This could be our first morning, sweet from the rain’s new fall. Let us not squander this opportunity. There are so many things we could do/change to save our planet and therefore ourselves. If we all do a little, it adds up to big.