Big Snow

When it's like this, the shrubs are smashed down and the trees lose their limbs.  Other than that it's simply radically beautiful, especially the day after, when the sun comes out.

Something about this is so evocative of childhood.  Maybe because I grew up in the land of Lake Effect, east of Cleveland, where like Eskimos we had different names for snow.  Yesterday it was what we called Good Packing Snow, hell to shovel, fair for sledding, and great for snowballs and snowmen.

Maybe also because it means you go out bundled up and come back wet, tired, and looking for hot chocolate.  Like a kid.  Only now the reason for the outdoor effort is to make sure the paths are clear and you can drive to work the next day, not in order to snowface your brother.

Heaviest snow we've had here in St. Louis, heaviest since a blizzard in the early '80's.  But everything is pretty well organized, no one died, and the world is covered with meringue.

Hiding from The Big Guy

There aren't many stories from the Bible that stick with me but two do clang in my head, off and on.  The first is right up there early in Genesis, when Adam hides from God because Adam knows enough to know he is naked.  The second is the terrifying parable of the talents, where one servant hides his talent (a nicely ambiguous term) rather than putting it to productive use.  In both cases, the hiding man suffers.

I do know enough to know that I'm still hiding myself and my talent and that, well into my seventh decade on the planet, I'd better come out and start to produce something with meaning or I'm looking at quietly sinking beneath the waves, with nothing but a reputation for being a pretty nice guy.

It's more than sitting in the front row and raising your hand a lot, because I did that.  It's more than volunteering for tricky assignments, because I've done that too.  It has something to do with coming out and standing in front of The Big Guy, and standing up to that authority.  Saying, here's my best shot.  And pulling the trigger.

Waking in the middle of the night

4 a.m., and try to think through what's worrying me, or what's worth planning.

One day, years ago, I said to a woman co-worker:  "My best thoughts come to me in the middle of the night."

To which she replied:  "Not me.   Mostly what I come up with the middle of the night isn't worth a damn."

Now I think I was wrong, misquoting something I'd heard in another context, and she was right.  With quite a few healthy decades of middle-of-the-nighters behind me, now I know:  by the next morning (a) what seemed brilliant seems, by morning light, pretty ordinary and (b) what seemed scary now seems like no big deal.  And it's a stew, of everyday reality and that night's dreams, brown and complicated.

Damn

Snow coming back.  This winter thing is just going on too long, as usual.

I wish Global Warming would sort itself out.  I was nurturing a theory for years that we were really in a secular cooling trend, and that putting all that greenhouse gas up there was cushioning the blow.   The contrarian in me would still like to believe that; or, conversely, that in fact the waters really are rising and before long St. Louis will have a view of the ocean.

But the truth seems to be that it's just weather.  This winter isn't going to be the longest or shortest or coldest or warmest or wettest or driest we've ever had.  Just the usual, pain-in -the-butt winter.  A big, grey view to the east, over a leafless landscape, to the horizon; no ocean. A blast of cold at the end of the day, as I march into the garage, heading home.

Leading shoot

More of the ideas that lead me.  I just want to stand on shoulders.

"In fact I doubt whether there is a more decisive moment for a thinking being than when the scales fall from his eyes and he discovers that he is not an isolated unit lost in the cosmic solitudes  and realizes that a universal will to live converges and is hominized in him.

"In such a vision man is seen not as a static center of the world - as he for long believed himself to be - but as the axis and leading shoot of evolution, which is something much finer."

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, from the Forward.

Lent

I always give things up for Lent.  Always tried to be creative.  Last year - the year before? - I gave up the Internet.  Made for a less interesting 40 days, and it didn't do the things I thought it would, like impel me to spend more time with books and music.  Or one year, alcohol.  Which didn't make my life much less interesting, but it made me less interesting - or so I was told.

This year, I'm giving up giving up things for Lent.  I'm continuing to indulge in the usual give-up candidates, and with each one thinking, is this really a vice, or is it a virtue... Because someone (with a lot more piety than I have) once told me:  you don't give up the bad things for Lent, you give up the good ones.  Otherwise it isn't sacrifice, it's self-improvement.

Back

Gone away too long.  But I had thinking to do.

Starting back, with the General Confession, an old version.

My mother loved this, especially the "left undone" part. I was happy to be a miserable offender.

Almighty and most merciful Father; We have erred, and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep.
We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts.
We have offended against thy holy laws.
We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; And we have done those things which we ought not to have done; And there is no health in us.
But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable offenders.
Spare thou them, O God, which confess their faults.
Restore thou them that are penitent; According to thy promises declared unto mankind in Christ Jesu our Lord.
And grant, O most merciful Father, for his sake; That we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life, To the glory of thy holy Name.
Amen.