What heart could have thought you?— Past our devisal (O filigree petal!) Fashioned so purely, Fragilely, surely, From what Paradisal Imagineless metal, Too costly for cost? Who hammered you, wrought you, From argentine vapour?— “God was my shaper. Passing surmisal, He hammered, He wrought me, From curled silver vapour, To lust of His mind;— Thou could’st not have thought me! So purely, so palely, Tinily, surely, Mightily, frailly, Insculped and embossed, With His hammer of wind, And His graver of frost.“ ~Francis Thompson “To a Snowflake”
photo by Alexay Kljatov, pbs.org
photo by Alexay Kljatov, pbs.org
I wish one could press snowflakes in a book like flowers. ~James Schuyler from “February 13, 1975” in Collected Poems
Each snowflake falls alone, settling in together to create sculptures in communal effort. And each is created as a singular masterpiece itself.
We too, as the created, are like each snowflake. Together we change the world, sometimes for better, too often for worse. But each of us have come from heaven uniquely designed and purposed, preciously shaped, hammered, wrought and preserved for eternity through God’s loving sacrifice.
Without God embossed on our surface, we would melt into oblivion between the pages of history.
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It is a kind of love, is it not? How the cup holds the tea, How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare, How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes Or toes. How soles of feet know Where they’re supposed to be. I’ve been thinking about the patience Of ordinary things, how clothes Wait respectfully in closets And soap dries quietly in the dish, And towels drink the wet From the skin of the back. And the lovely repetition of stairs. And what is more generous than a window? ~Pat Schneider “The Patience of Ordinary Things”
…leave me a little love, A voice to speak to me in the day end, A hand to touch me in the dark room Breaking the long loneliness. In the dusk of day-shapes Blurring the sunset, One little wandering, western star Thrust out from the changing shores of shadow. Let me go to the window, Watch there the day-shapes of dusk And wait and know the coming Of a little love. ~Carl Sandburg from “At a Window”
Everything looks a little different when framed by a window, especially in the winter when protected from the weather. I am set apart, looking out, rather than immersed within the icy snowy landscape myself.
With that separation, I feel as though I could be looking at the past, the present or the future.
It is not unlike being in an art museum, walking past masterpieces that offer a framed view into another time and place, populated with people I don’t know and will never meet.
So I go to the windows, moving through the house and peering out at the life that awaits beyond the frame. But rather than simply admire the view, protected as I am from the chill wind, I find the courage to walk out the door into whatever awaits beyond the glass.
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Low clouds hang on the mountain. The forest is filled with fog. A short distance away the Giant trees recede and grow Dim. Two hundred paces and They are invisible. All Day the fog curdles and drifts. The cries of the birds are loud. They sound frightened and cold. Hour By hour it grows colder. Just before sunset the clouds Drop down the mountainside. Long Shreds and tatters of fog flow Swiftly away between the Trees. Now the valley below Is filled with clouds like clotted Cream and over them the sun Sets, yellow in a sky full Of purple feathers. After dark A wind rises and breaks branches From the trees and howls in the Treetops and then suddenly Is still. Late at night I wake And look out of the tent. The Clouds are rushing across the Sky and through them is tumbling The thin waning moon. Later All is quiet except for A faint whispering. I look Out. Great flakes of wet snow are Falling. Snowflakes are falling Into the dark flames of the Dying fire. In the morning the Pine boughs are sagging with snow, And the dogwood blossoms are Frozen, and the tender young Purple and citron oak leaves. ~Kenneth Rexroth “Snow” from The Complete Poems of Kenneth Rexroth
Snow and then freezing rain fell for hours yesterday so we remain cloaked and iced and drifted this morning
~we appear more pristine than we are_
Underneath this chilly blanket we’re barely presentable, sleep-deprived, wrinkled and worn, all mud and mildew beneath.
~yet a thaw is coming~
Spring will rise from its snowy bed, lit from an inner fire that never burns out.
Through clouds like ashes from a burning bush, we turn aside to see God’s glory; our eyes carefully covered from the bright glaze of snow and ice.
We feel His flash of life as He passes by.
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If day after day I was caught inside this muffle and hush
I would notice how birches move with a lovely hum of spirits,
how falling snow is a privacy warm as the space for sleeping,
how radiant snow is a dream like leaving behind the body
and rising into that luminous place where sometimes you meet
the people you’ve lost. How silver branches scrawl their names
in tangled script against the white. How the curves and cheekbones
of all my loved ones appear in the polished marble of drifts. ~Kirsten Dierking “Shoveling Snow” from Northern Oracle.
These sub-zero January nights linger long, beginning early and lasting late. I find myself stuck in an insistent winter, pushing through the snowdrifts.
A wintry soul can be a cold and empty place.
I appeal to my Creator who knows my struggle. He asks me to keep my promises because He keeps His promises. His buds of hope and light and warmth still grace my bare branches.
He brings me out of the dark, into the freshness of a snowy dawn, to finish what He brought me here to do.
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Today we woke up to a revolution of snow, its white flag waving over everything, the landscape vanished, not a single mouse to punctuate the blankness, and beyond these windows
the government buildings smothered, schools and libraries buried, the post office lost under the noiseless drift, the paths of trains softly blocked, the world fallen under this falling.
In a while, I will put on some boots and step out like someone walking in water, and the dog will porpoise through the drifts, and I will shake a laden branch sending a cold shower down on us both.
But for now I am a willing prisoner in this house, a sympathizer with the anarchic cause of snow. I will make a pot of tea and listen to the plastic radio on the counter, as glad as anyone to hear the news
that the Kiddie Corner School is closed, the Ding-Dong School, closed. the All Aboard Children’s School, closed, the Hi-Ho Nursery School, closed, along with—some will be delighted to hear—
the Toadstool School, the Little School, Little Sparrows Nursery School, Little Stars Pre-School, Peas-and-Carrots Day School the Tom Thumb Child Center, all closed, and—clap your hands—the Peanuts Play School.
So this is where the children hide all day, These are the nests where they letter and draw, where they put on their bright miniature jackets, all darting and climbing and sliding, all but the few girls whispering by the fence.
And now I am listening hard in the grandiose silence of the snow, trying to hear what those three girls are plotting, what riot is afoot, which small queen is about to be brought down. ~Billy Collins “Snow Day”
Two posts in one day! This winter storm deserves documentation…
Thanks to a snow day here in the Pacific Northwest, everyone is grounded and homebound except the hungry birds who have completely cleaned out my seed and suet supply. They stare at me accusingly through the window so I have tossed them a loaf of sourdough bread to pick away at.
Some would say that retirement seems like a snow day everyday and they aren’t too far wrong. The difference is that usually I’m not slogging through drifting snow to get to my barn chores so my work is a little more onerous on days like this. I don’t mind too much if it is only a day or two.
So we’re hunkered down for the duration. Here’s hoping you are safe and warm and enjoying the view wherever you may be on this wintry day.
The way a crow Shook down on me The dust of snow From a hemlock tree Has given my heart A change of mood And saved some part Of a day I had rued. ~Robert Frost “Dust of Snow”
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If you have seen the snow under the lamppost piled up like a white beaver hat on the picnic table or somewhere slowly falling into the brook to be swallowed by water, then you have seen beauty and know it for its transience. And if you have gone out in the snow for only the pleasure of walking barely protected from the galaxies, the flakes settling on your parka like the dust from just-born stars, the cold waking you as if from long sleeping, then you can understand how, more often than not, truth is found in silence, how the natural world comes to you if you go out to meet it, its icy ditches filled with dead weeds, its vacant birdhouses, and dens full of the sleeping. But this is the slowed down season held fast by darkness and if no one comes to keep you company then keep watch over your own solitude. In that stillness, you will learn with your whole body the significance of cold and the night, which is otherwise always eluding you. ~Patricia Fargnoli “Winter Grace” from Hallowed
Tell all the truth but tell it slant — Success in Circuit lies Too bright for our infirm Delight The Truth’s superb surprise As Lightning to the Children eased With explanation kind The Truth must dazzle gradually Or every man be blind — ~Emily Dickinson(1263)
If the truth is revealed all at once, I tend to hide from it.
Sometimes I need to see it emerge slowly and silently, a gentle dawning as if a rising sun is transforming night to day. If truth is an illuminating back drop reflecting onto my life, I am less likely to be blinded by its brilliance.
Instead it transforms me, dazzled and dazed.
I once was lost, but now am found. Was blind but now I see.
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I caught this morning morning’s minion, king- dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing, As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing.
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear, Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion. ~Gerard Manley Hopkins “The Windhover”
Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river? Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air – An armful of white blossoms, A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies, Biting the air with its black beak? Did you hear it, fluting and whistling A shrill dark music – like the rain pelting the trees – like a waterfall Knifing down the black ledges? And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds – A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything? And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for? And have you changed your life? ~Mary Oliver from “The Swan”
I hold my heart in hiding, trying to protect that tender core of who I am from being pierced and shredded by the slings and arrows of every day life. It can be a bruising and bumpy ride.
Yet to live fully, as I am created to live, I must fling myself into the open, wimpling wings spread, the wind holding me up, hovering and ready to soar.
To stay aloft, I must change as the wind changes around me.
I take my chances, knowing the fall will come. My wounds shall be healed, even as they bleed.
There is no lack of wonder. So stirred. So much beauty to behold. So much heart to take out of hiding and share freely, no matter the buffeting.
Ah… Ah, my dear.
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Do you know why this world is as bad as it is? It is because people think only about their own business, andwon’t trouble themselves to stand up for the oppressed, nor bring the wrong-doers to light. My doctrine is this: that if we see cruelty or wrong that we have the power to stop, and do nothing, we make ourselves sharers in the guilt. ~Anna Sewell from Black Beauty
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the good Samaritan on life’s roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day the whole Jericho road must be transformed so thatmen and women will not be beaten and robbed as they make their journey through life. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it understands that an edifice that produces beggars needs restructuring. America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities… ~Martin Luther King, Jr. from a speech April 4, 1967
We live in a time where the groaning need and dividedness of humankind is especially to be felt and recognized. Countless people are subjected to hatred, violence and oppression which go unchecked. The injustice and corruption which exist today are causing many voices to be raised to protest and cryout that something be done. Many men and women are being moved to sacrifice much in the struggle for justice, freedom, and peace. There is a movement afoot in our time, a movement which is growing, awakening.
We must recognize that we as individuals are to blame forevery social injustice, every oppression, the downgrading of others and the injury that man does to man, whetherpersonal or on a broader plane.… God mustintervene with his spirit and his justice and his truth. The presentmisery, need, and decay must pass away and the new day of the Son of Man must dawn. This is the advent of God’s coming. ~Dwight Blough from the introduction to When the Time was Fulfilled (1965)
I weep to see ongoing bitter divisions among our citizens as we fail to learn from history’s past errors. Here we are again, groaning against one another once more, ignited by front-running candidates for president whose ethics and values do not represent freedom and justice for all.
As we once again walk this hazardous Jericho Road together, we cannot pass by those who lie dying in the ditch, our brother, our sister, our neighbor, a stranger.
We must stop and help lest we share the guilt of their suffering.
It could be you or me there bleeding, beaten, abandoned until Someone took our place so we can get up and walk Home.
Maranatha.
At the edge of Jericho Road Beneath the street light’s yellow orange glow The feared and the fallen go In the way of predator and prey No one’s spared Because hate is too great a weight to bear
In a cage of shadows we meet Naked and bloodied in the street At the mercy, at the feet Of the way of predator and prey No one’s spared Because hate is too great a weight to bear
In the darkness on shattered pavement The better angels fade Blurred in slumber, murder by numbers Do you know my name? Do you know my name? I believe in you
Because everyone holds some part of the truth And now, I’m in your way Do we stay on Jericho Road, forever going nowhere Till hate is too great a weight to bear
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Today is one of those excellent January partly cloudies in which light chooses an unexpected part of the landscape to trick out in gilt, and then the shadow sweeps it away. You know you’re alive. You take huge steps, trying to feel the planet’s roundness arc between your feet. ~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
After years of rarely paying attention, too busy with work or household or barnyard tasks needing doing, I realized only a finite number of sunrises and sunsets are left to me.
I don’t want to miss them, so now I stop, take a deep breath and feel lucky to be alive, a witness to that moment.
My feet are planted on the ground beneath me. My face feels the light from above, then a shadow sweeps it away, just for now, not forever.
Sometimes sunrises and sunsets are plain and gray, just as I am, but there are days lit from above and beneath with a fire that ignites across the sky.
I too am engulfed for a moment or two, until sun or shadow sweeps me away, transfixed and transformed, yet forever grateful for the moment of light.
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The cold has the philosophical value of reminding men that the universe does not love us…cold is our ancient companion. To return back indoors after exposure to the bitter, inimical, implacable cold is to experience gratitude for the shelters of civilization, for the islands of warmth that life creates. ~John Updike from “The Cold”in Winter: A Spiritual Biography of the Season
Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I’ve tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice. ~Robert Frost “Fire and Ice“
One day, the scientists tell us, every star in the universe will burn out, the galaxies gradually blackening until
The last light flares and falls returning all to darkness where it will remain until the end of what we have come
to think of as time. But even in the dark, time would go on, bold in its black cloak, no shade, no shadow,
only the onward motion of movement, which is what time, if it exists at all, really is: the absence of reversal, the sheer
impossibility of that final fire dying into itself, dragging the day deep into what it no longer is,
bowing only to rise into the other, into a shining the heavens were commanded to host, the entire
always poised between the gravity of upward and downward, like the energy of a star itself constantly balanced between
its weight straining to crush its core and the heat of that same core heaving it outward, as though what destroys
redeems, what collapses also radiates, not unlike this life, Love, which we are traveling through at such
an astonishing speed, entire galaxies racing past, universes, it as if we are watching time itself drift
into the cosmos, like a spinning wall of images alrealdy gone, and I realize most of what we know
we can’t see, like the birdsong overheard or the women in China building iPhones or the men picking
strawberries in the early dawn or even sleeping sons in the other room who will wake up and ask
for their light sabers. Death will come for us so fast we will never be able to outrun it,
no matter how fast we travel or how heavily we arm ourselves against the invisible,
which is what I’m thinking, Love, even though the iron in the blood that keeps you alive was born from a hard
star-death somewhere in the past that is also the future, and what I mean is to say that I am so lucky
to be living with you in this brief moment of light before everything goes dark. ~Dean Rader“Still Life with Gratitude”
This week has been a good reminder of our helplessness and need for one another in the face of single digit temperatures with sub-zero windchills.
This is the kind of cold that tries men’s souls and frail bodies. This is “kill the bugs and the allergens” cold tries to balance out the ecosystem as well as our internal emotional and physical thermostats.
Chill like this descends unbidden from the Arctic, blasting through the thickest layers of clothing, sneaking through drafty doors and windows, and freezing pipes not left dripping. It leaves no one untouched and unbitten with universal freezer burn.
A bitter cold snap ensures even the most determined unhoused “living in the woods” individualists must become companionable or freeze to death, necessitating temporary shelter indoors with others for survival.
It sometimes means forced companionship with those we would ordinarily avoid, with whom we have little in common, with whom we disagree and even quarrel, with whom sharing a hug or snuggling for warmth would be unimaginable.
Our whole nation is in just such a temperamental and political cold snap today, so terribly and bitterly divided. If we don’t come in out of the cold, we each will perish alone. It is time to be grateful we have each other during these difficult times, ancient and uneasy companions that we are.
At least we might generate some heat by civilly discussing the issues we all face. The risk is letting disagreements get so out of control that nothing is left but smoke and ashes from the incineration.
Somewhere there must be middle ground: perhaps we can share sanctuary from the bitter cold through the warmth of a mutually well-tended and companionable hearth.
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