The Morning Hour

The morning is that time of day, Henry David Thoreau wrote in Walden, “when I am awake and there is a dawn in me.” For nearly a half century, Richard Quinney has treasured a quiet morning hour for meditation on experiences and events of his daily life: personal relationships, thoughts and dreams, geographical moves, illness and recovery, books read and music heard, research and reflection on the lives of his ancestors, and everything that has seemed of importance to him at that moment.
            Tending to that precious morning hour was a habit formed in Quinney’s early years and persisted as an urgent need for reflection, to give meaning to existence in a most mysterious world. “Recording my experiences, placing them in a spiritual and intellectual context, became my work and my joy,” he writes. “I could not have lived otherwise.”