My Lord, What A Morning

When Time Stood Still

At 8:07 am on January 13, 2018, a cell phone emergency alert warning of a ballistic missile threat inbound to Hawaii was sent to island residents. It took officials nearly 40 minutes to correct the false alarm.

My Lord, what a morning,

When the stars begin to fall, you'll hear the trumpet sound,

To wake the nations underground. - Negro Spiritual

I remember the day well.

It was a picture-perfect morning in Waikiki. Dawn came all too quickly. I awoke to a spill of sunshine on my face.

I pushed open the shutters, allowing the soft light to wash into the room. An egret that had perched on an anchored canoe at the Outrigger's went off in a sudden clap of wings into the deep, cloudless blue of the sky. At the water's edge, a group of surfers walked past, holding their boards. In the distance, the swells were slowly rising, forming waves that seemed to collide before immediately cresting again.

Beyond this side of the island, there was only vastness.

When the initial cell phone alert broke at 8:07 am urging residents of Hawaii to seek shelter because of an impending missile strike, it seemed as if all had been compressed into one mournful note. It was an elegy. A requiem.

I heard the words, but they refused to form any meaning. I sat there in painful silence for a minute. I heard my voice slowly swallowed by it, and couldn't work out what to do with my hands.

So, this was how it would end - a warm gust of wind would exhale my way and I'd disappear forever. All glory would vanish. All greatness gone. It confounded me how fragile human life was – how lives were nothing but dead letters on the wind, scattered and disposed of, burned or thrown away.

Pacific Command had previously given an estimated fifteen minutes for people to take shelter. It wasn't much time at all, plus where does one go?

Time had slowed to an agonizing crawl. It blurred past as if in a fever dream.

In those fifteen minutes of what I thought would be my final morning, I roamed the deep places of my soul in search of familiar faces – of family, of those whom I love, and even those whom I might miss, no matter how little I had in common with them. As I did that, in an instant, a thousand secrets I had built and saved flooded my mind.

My face softened at the memory of the home I grew up in, miles across the ocean: the inescapable place, the place to which my heart's compass always turned. I couldn't stop the flow of details, the flow of images in my mind.

I shut my eyes for a moment as I bade farewell to everything, and at once everything turned in perfect synchronicity. I felt a kind of tranquility.

Then at 8:45 am, a cell phone alert broke my reverie. The first warning had been a false alarm. Repeat. False Alarm.

It was as if a heavenly choir had started singing and releasing doves of peace. Thank God! What an outrageous gift.

There is going to be a Next Day.