5:00 a.m.

I never chose to be a morning person and actually kind of miss sleeping in. My record as a teenager was around noon. (“The sleep of the innocents,” my father, an insomniac and manic-depressive, used to say). But years of getting up for babies, now all in their twenties, set a different pattern, and these days I am usually awake at 4:30 or 5:00.

If you’re awake you might as well be doing something useful, and the most useful thing is to take a dip into the mystery, once more for this new day, of Christ in you, the hope of glory. I do actually believe all that, the whole Nicene Creed thing, with no parts left out and no finger-crossing, and would paint a bullseye on my chest for the firing squad if I had to, but it’s so much more compelling in these early hours. I need time each day to get re-oriented and this is the best time by far—the most pliable state of my heart, the most efficient firing of brain synapses.