We had a nice blustery snowfall last night. I walked to the bus stop by Central supermarket on King street, via Mount Hope cemetary. I began my walk before the sidewalks had been cleared, and the combination of wind and snow had made interesting mounds and hedges shaped like miniature snow cliffs. I ran my fingers along the freshly fallen show, making little lines in it, enjoying the feel of cold against mitten warmed fingers.
I made first footprints in some places.
Snowfall makes the world new and it feels to me like God's forgiveness, raining down on an often uncaring world, covering an aching, abused and bruised environment with a gentle cover of white, sometimes blown all about in representative fury ... yet after the storm it is settled, peaceful. Grace made manifest in a covering of crisp, crystalline white. How much we can learn from the simple snow fall - it's willingness to go everywhere, unrestricted by fear and judgement, unafraid to create newness over the old, the tired, the worn out ... unafraid to embrace everything in it's undiscriminating coat of white. Making cosy nests of our human warm places.
The cemetary is lonely, and the anonymity of death is magnified by the snow drifts ... ostentatious headstones whose names are hidden by snow, becoming as unidentified as the more frugal headstones ... creating a field of undifferentiated dead ... together and all alone under the frozen ground, under the undiscriminating snow - there is the resonance of solitude, lonesome crane ... this is how we will arrive and this is how we will depart. Knowing this is how we will all depart, names not mattering, how do we choose to live this day? How do we choose to love and be with each other this day?
"Our language has wisely sensed the two sides of being alone. It has created the word, loneliness to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word, solitude to express the glory of being alone" - Paul Tillich.
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