First Snow

Rumpled heated throws

Thrown across a lazy couch

Our pup lies sleeping

There is something magical in snow, and the first snow of the season is wondrous. It is enchanting. The quotation on my breathing (aka meditation) app yesterday was "Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present," by Albert Camus. There is nothing like waking up to a white-highlighted, Christmas-wreathed, front-yard-still-lighted-because-the-sunlight-hasn't-actually-made-it-through-the-clouds-to-turn-the-yard-light-off, early morning panoramita (our front window) to settle one's soul. It calls out to give all, all our heart and soul, to that present moment.

Add a puppy curled up on the couch and a blinking candle to the scene and Merlin might have conjured it up. 

The present moment.

It's the only time we have, and is too often missed, glossed over, taken for granted, and overlooked.

John O'Donohue, in Walking in Wonder, said, "One of the greatest sins is the unlived life, not to allow yourself to become chief executive of the product you call your life, to have a reverence always for the immensity that is inside you."   Going even further, the deeply intellectual-experiential author Rebecca Solnit wrote, "To consider earth holy is to connect the lowest and most material to the most high and ethereal, to close the breach between matter and and spirit. It subversively suggests that the whole world might potentially be holy and that the sacred can be underfoot rather than above." She was writing about holy wells in her book about walking. 

The material-holy resides concurrently, immediately.

On the first snow day of the year, it seemed simple to connect the immensity inside us to the immensity of the world around us. The next day, with snow melting and intermittent rain, I took my daily walk around the neighborhood.  A couple of blocks away, two youngsters were selling baked goods, their mother was the treasurer and their grandmother, I believe she was, was the cheerleader.  Three aunts were buying as well, and I promptly asked if they were aunt-eaters, at which they laughed politely. ("Oh, you're one of those....", one remarked.)  The kids, who were the bakers in addition to being the sales force, were raising money to give food to families in need.  Last year, they made enough to help three families. This year, who knows?

Well... homemade cookies, made by children, to help feed people during this holy season....what are you going to do?

I bought two cookies.

I went on my way, ate the cookies, and on the way back from my walk bought four more.  Only two of those made it back for Lana to eat.

There is a bit of magic in this, would you agree?  Or, to put it in a different context, some kind of holy spirit.  Kids, families, puppies, snow, neighborhood, rain, and to complete the Thomas Kinkade-ish moving scene, generosity personified and, for me, deep gratitude.

The confluence of the material and the spiritual, our interiority and the world around us, resides in the vastness and intimacy of the present moment.  Every one of them.  We miss too many of them.

I wonder if the kids will be out selling cookies again today.

Sources/Resources

O'Donohue, J., & Quinn, J. (2018). Walking in wonder: eternal wisdom for a modern world. Penguin Random House. 

Solnit, R. (2000). Wanderlust: a history of walking. Viking.

December 2, 2023. Taking a walk around the neighborhood on a snowy-rainy day.