The period of time when the sun is below the horizon

It is one of life's bitterest truths that bedtime so often arrives just when things are really getting interesting.  ~Lemony Snicket

There is something I simply love about the night.  In the night, the busy concerns of the daytime fade away.  The world changes to a calm, quite place.  At night, when we can see the stars and the moon, our very place in the universe is put into perspective and questions about what it means to be human come to the fore.  We can enter into the depths of our humanity.  What am I?  Who am I?  Where am I going?  These are the questions of night.  Night is also the time for intimacy, the time when the depth of one's humanity, the movement of one's heart in response to the questions of the night, can be shared with another.  One human grows closer to another as they together discover the sameness of their response.

Learn to reverence night and to put away the vulgar fear of it, for, with the banishment of night from the experience of man, there vanishes as well a religious emotion, a poetic mood, which gives depth to the adventure of humanity.  ~Henry Beston

Perhaps this is why I've become the sort of person who stays up fairly late, at least more often than I ever imagined I would.  But "blessed are the owls, for they shall inherit the mystery and magic of the night," says an anonymous person.

This is all not to say that the day doesn't have its own beauty.  Day brings the return of hope of victory in battle, and the renewed possibility of life and rebirth.  It's all part of the cyclical universe, where each part of the cycle communicates its own mystery.

Every night, when I go to sleep, I die. Every morning, when I wake up, I am reborn.  ~Mahatma Gandhi