Easter Morning, Before Sunrise

I had set an alarm for 5am without knowing exactly why. Something had been pulling at me all week — a restlessness I could not name. I drove to the beach alone in the dark, before anyone else was there. I sat on the sand and watched the sky change. When the sun broke the horizon I felt something so large and so quiet that I did not have words for it in the moment and I am not sure I do now. It was not emotion, though I was moved. It was more like standing inside a fact — an enormous, luminous fact — that the world had just confirmed again. He is risen. I drove home and made breakfast and called my mother and told her I loved her. It was the most alive I have felt in years.