Monday, February 23, 2015

I hate snow.

I recognize that may seem to be a precipitous statement (precipitous, HA! because snow=precipitation), but I have my reasons.  Good reasons. Very good reasons.

First, snow is cold. I recognize this is axiomatic, but consider for a moment my feet.

I grow old ... I grow old ... I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.*
Be glad they're in slippers. Feet are kind of gross.
For as long as I can remember, cold feet have been the salient feature of winter for me - especially in the snow, which seems to be a thoroughly efficient conduction medium.  Once my feet get cold, the beauty of a freshly fallen blanket of white quickly turns to ice. Purple, this little piggy went to the meat locker ice. As someone who grew up refusing to button my jacket ever, for any reason, and who still tends to go without outerwear much of the time, this may seem spurious; but consider this: I ALWAYS wear socks. And shoes. But the truth is, thermal socks are a joke; insulated boots lie. (I will admit I never tried those weird electric sock things because, let’s face it, live wires woven around my person sounds more like a torture method than a winter strategy.)

Really - who wants to attract lightning with their FEET?
No matter what I do, my feet get cold, and I believe I am on firm, temperate ground when I say this:
When your feet are cold, there is no joy in the world.

Then there’s the shoveling. I have a theory: a person’s appreciation for snow is in inverse proportion to the amount they have actually had to shovel - those who love it most (children, rich skiers, my dogs) are the ones who shovel it the least, and vice versa. Some of you might take exception to this, insisting that  you just love shoveling snow, or don’t really mind wrenching your back over and over again, or think frostbite and a nasty Ben Gay addiction is a small price to pay for winter beauty; feel free to peddle your bizarre life observations to whoever will listen, he says with his fingers in his ears while he says LALALALA...

I have said it before and I’ll say it again: I shoveled enough snow in 1977 to last me a lifetime. And then I did it again in 1978. 


To give you a sense of scale, my sister is seven feet tall.
And standing on my shoulders.

Snow in Pittsburgh. Snow in Finleyville. Snow in Leicester. Snow in Linesville. Snow in the Valley. My life has been full of snow - mountains and mountains of snow. I get tired just thinking about it. And my feet are getting cold.

And consider this: snow is a lie. It offers a sort of false reprieve, - a fleeting illusion that things are fine, lovely, even, clean. A story: in one of those dark, snowy high school years, a friend brought me home from a band rehearsal in the family truckster – a Chevelle Malibu Station Wagon.

                                                                                      Photo by Roadsidepictures
Check out the angle of the tailgate – it will become significant in just a second.

After I removed my guitar case from the way back, he went to shut the tailgate, failing to notice how far back the rest of the equipment had shifted.  Down came the tailgate; crash! went the back glass; @#$%! went my friend. The back window was everywhere, except in the back window– mostly on the floor of the car, but quite a lot in the driveway, too, it turned out. I say it turned out because at that moment, I couldn’t tell – all those little pellets of window were nestled snug in the snow that covered everything. It wasn’t until spring (sometime in July, I think), long after my friend had invented some story about those darn Baldwin Borough kids throwing snowballs,  my father asked me, what is all this glass doing all over the front yard? WHAT DID YOU DO???  

And lest you think this sort of snow hiding a multitude of sins thing is somehow a rare occurrence, just come look at our back yard when the big thaw comes.

They may look dead, but trust me, their alimentary canals are open for business.

Which brings me to Lent. Clever transition, I know.

I have always found it intriguing that American Christians use such decidedly rustic, (that is to say pagan) words to describe both the central defining event of the faith, and the period of preparation which precedes it; Easter is derived from the Old English name of a Germanic goddess of the dawn, while Lent is a shortened version of the Old English for Spring (Lencten, reflecting the lengthening of the days...) Within these Old English terms there is, I believe, an instructive lesson in the purpose of what is called in Latin Quadragesima, the forty days, and of the significance of the Paschal celebration of the resurrection.

For many of us, Lent comes around at the low point of the year. The 'fun' of Christmas is long gone, and the worst of winter has settled upon us; it's freezing, and we’re tired of the darkness, of the extra effort required to do the most mundane things. 


Photo by Tobi Mattingly
Getting the paper.

But all at once, we have the opportunity to change our frame of reference. Ash Wednesday reminds us not only of our mortality (which certainly puts my cold feet in perspective), but of God’s amazing love for his frail, broken children.



Remember that thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return.


Each day in Lent, we are challenged to consider that truth, in all its glory, all its contradictions. Using the disciplines of the church, we can mark the movement from winter to spring with our own journey from sin to salvation, a journey which takes us deep into our own hearts, then back to Jerusalem with the cheering crowds, through the Stations of the Cross with Jesus on the road to Golgotha, to a borrowed tomb with Joseph and the women, and a locked second story room with the disciples, awaiting the dawn of a new day.

Lent starts out in the Bleak Midwinter**, and it is work – hard work, sometimes. But if we do it right, it shatters the illusion that our darkness, our sin, is hidden away; it uncovers the truth, in all its ugliness and beauty, and shows, once and for all, we can clean up the mess, because in Jesus Christ, God says we can – and he’ll even help.

All images are subject to the Creative Commons license.

* from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot (1888-1965). 

**A fine poet, Christina Rossetti apparently forgot to check the calendar; Christmas is at the beginning of winter. Barely. Yes, I was a Lit major; get over it.





2 comments:

  1. This is brilliant! And, it is one of the best pieces on Lent that I have read in a long time. Thank you, preacher-friend, this truly warmed my heart (if, sadly, not my feet).

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  2. Your feet and your wit continue to ripen with age, Pat!

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