Two days ago, we woke to winter.
(Three days ago I was cleaning garden beds and delighting in the early spring yellow of narcissus tete-a-tete, and even contemplating mowing my lawn.)
Now we are a white landscape of luxuriant and pristine fleece–maybe 6 inches of snow. Trees and shrubs are laden, as if carefully outlined. The morning sun, low in the southeastern sky, reflects, glints, bounces and glistens off the snow. Walking this morning, there is only the sound of boots scrunching in the snow. When you stop, there is silence. As if the whole world has stopped with you. I savor the moment. But is is not without some internal protest. You know, “it’s okay to savor for a little while, as long as I remember to not waste too much time, because I need to get back to work. . .” After all, shouldn’t savoring be time-limited? Let’s not get too carried away (I hear the voices from my childhood religion, putting the kibosh on anything resembling joy, elation, delight or ecstasy. Or heaven forbid, “wasted time.”)
Maybe that’s the magic of a snowstorm. While it may not be a lot of snow for most parts of the country, it’s a lot for here, and unlike the upper peninsula of Michigan, all of our neighbors don’t have snow plows on the front of their pickup truck. So. . .we’ll be snowed in for a day or two. Which is a gift in an odd sort of way. The permission to “spend” the day a little differently.
I was helped by reading Eugene O’Kelly’s book, Chasing Daylight. It is a book about the last three months of his life. O’Kelly reinforces what we all know to be true. This moment, I have a choice. I can receive the gift of life and embrace it, and immerse myself in it. Or, continue to live in oblivion, asleep, distracted, and waiting. And in the process, we bury the very things that might set us free (borrowing from Stephen Levine). Such as stopping, stillness, listening, hearing, tasting, touching, seeing, smelling and embracing.
And delighting.
You can hear the footsteps of God when silence reigns in the mind. Sri Sathya Sai Baba
In an episode of The West Wing, CJ Craig (White House chief of staff) is wired, tense and distracted. Her love interest shows up, middle of the workday, at her White House office, “to take her for a walk.” She consents (but not without a fight, you know, so much “to do”). On the walk, she fidgets and asks, “So, what was so important, taking this walk.”
He says, “Just to see.”
“Well,” she tells him, “this is not the day for it.”
Sure, I want to live this moment mindful of the sacred, but this is not the day for it. As if there is a special day for it?
Maybe it takes a snowstorm to remind us. . .that, in fact, this is exactly the day for it. . .just to see.
(If you wish to enjoy my winter garden. . .)
We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature–trees, flowers, grass–grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence.
We need silence to be able to touch souls. Mother Teresa
4 Comments
Do you want to borrow my snowshoes for today? They make walking in the snow that much sweeter. :-)
Yes, that would be great! Thanks. . .
We have a man (here on the island) who has collected a vast assortment of ice skates, and he loans them to anyone when our island park pond freezes over. We should start the same program with snowshoes. I know that on my walk this morning, I did NOT have the right shoes. . .oh well. . .
Hi again, Mr. Hershey. As per usual, you continue to be a kindred spirit and virtual Staretz of sorts for me (removed is a better word—there’s something in me that viscerally recoils at the word “virtual”). I continue to be intoxicated by your wisdom (Buechner’s, too). I intuit its truth, and for quite some time, have felt my own thoughts and concerns relative to spiritual health, as such, relegated me to an island in our contemporary culture. I move in circles where the velocity of life is…well, untenable. Enough drama. :) C’est la vie, as the French say.
As I contemplated your post description of the serendipitous winter blanket (can that really be the case for a garden dweller? Grin) and the associated blessing of the pause that comes from the “magic of the snowstorm,” I was stuck by your phrase “savor the moment.” Ah…to SAVOR the kairos!! Therein truly lies REAL magic! But it’s a slippery thing for mere mortals, no? As you described, it’s easy to digress (maybe that’s a utilitarian necessity, who knows?) to the internal protest to “not waste too much time.” I do it all too often myself–the human condition, I suppose. All this brought to mind a strikingly subversive aphorism that I recently read from Nassim Taleb’s book, “The Bed of Procrustes”: “The only measure of success is how much time you have to kill.”
Constantine. Great remarks, per usual. Serendipitous blanket indeed. But then, when anything is viewed through the lens of gratitude, serendipity and magic come to the forefront.
(As a segue, when people ask me about my “theology,” I tell them that we don’t “believe” with the Bible, we “see” with it. Or whatever our holy writ may be. It’s the old Plato line, “Whatever is honored will be cultivated.”)
Which brings us back to savoring. What I notice is that “savoring” is organic. . .it springs from the soil of my heart and spirit. It cannot be constrained. Nor can it be derived by an act of compulsion (“Okay, I savored that, now I can check if off the list!”). And I find that, more often than not, I am quite “lost” in the moment. Which I think would be the true test of savoring. (Or, what some may describe as “killing time.”)