Today I Give Thanks for Snow

 Today I give thanks for snow.

 

“Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, further westwards, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves... His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.” 

-          from the final paragraph of James Joyce’s short story, The Dead.

 

We arrived back in Rochester, the other night, long afer midnight had come and gone.  Snow was “falling faintly” and “faintly falling,” smoothing out any rough edges it found along its earthward path.  December can feel like death.  The nights are long, the days gray.  Have we been abandoned to a deep, never ending cold?

 

Yet even as the snow covers the barren earth and branches, they are beginning their path forward toward spring.  They are asleep, not dead. 

 

We, too, are in this difficult interlude.  Post election.  Pre-Inauguration.  Are we dead or sleeping?  Are we beginning our own path toward spring?

 

These days, I frequently remind myself:  Just like the trees and the flowers, our hope and joy will rise again; just as the birds return, so too, will justice.  And right now is the time to begin that journey.