Despite the Falling Snow: A Message of Hope for Christmas of 2016

Snow is a unique symbol.

On one hand, snow is often a symbol of purity (such as the expression “Pure as the driven snow,”) of innocence, of beauty and light.

On the other, snow is also a symbol of death, of Earth falling under the spell of sleep.

Snow lies heavy on the ground, burying the world like soil. It muffles sounds. Its arrival signals the changes that drive life away. The leaves fall, leaving the trees as though they were dead. Killing frosts droop the flowers, browning once vibrant petals, yellowing the grass. Animal life sleeps, or dies. Bears retreat to their dens, insects and spiders and reptiles disappear, and frogs lie at the bottom of ponds, their life signs stilling until they exist in a state of suspended animation. Not even their hearts beat.

Like they were dead.

Like the temperate Earth, our lives begin in season, we burst into bloom, then harvest, and as an inevitable part of the cycle, we die.

There is immense potency, then, in the image of a flower that blooms in the dark and the snow.

“Lo, how a rose e'er blooming
From tender stem hath sprung,
Of Jesse's lineage coming,
As men of old have sung.

It came a flow'ret bright
Amid the cold of winter
When half-spent was the night.
Isaiah 'twas foretold it,
This Rose that I have in mind.

And with Mary we behold it,
The Virgin Mother so sweet and so kind.
To show God's love aright,
She bore to men a Savior
When half-spent was the night.”

A flower that blooms despite the falling snow represents faith in redemption, the ultimate triumph of life over death.

It is a fitful faith, starting like a snorer in sleep.

Robert Graves describes it this way:

“She tells her love while half asleep,
In the dark hours,
With half words whispered low;
As earth stirs in her winter sleep
And puts out grass and flowers
Despite the snow,
Despite the falling snow.”

For me, the religion of Christmastime is found in this image of mid-winter stirring.

Like snow, we have fallen. Our lives take form, condense as if the snow, trailing the cloudy glory from which we were born. But then, we are dragged downward to settle on the Earth, subject to winds of fate, part of the great force that has rendered the Earth itself dead.

And yet, despite our fallen state, Earth stirs. Hope remains in the soil, vital and alive and potent, thrusting through when least expected or likely.

We have the promised Savior, born as a rose blooming despite the cold cold winter and the darkened night, and we have each of us: half asleep, weakly whispering our love while our hope for redemption stirs like the Earth shooting forth grass and flowers despite being a winter wasteland.

Christ was born to save. His promise, is the promise of our life springing forth anew. It is found alone in His sacrifice.

What I invite you to reflect upon this Christmas day is the unique impact Christ's birth, death and resurrection have for you. While we are each under the spell of sleep and of death, of winter, our words of love mere half-words whispered low, our hours dark, and our faith a feeble stirring under the falling snow, because of why He came those many millennia ago, spring will come.

In remembrance of September 11th

Trigger warning:

September 11^th. 2001.

I was nine when the towers fell.

I heard something about buildings burning in New York City from my bus driver. My smarty pants self thought “There are ALWAYS buildings burning in New York City. Big deal.”

That was all I got the whole school day...my teacher was either ignorant of what was going on, or, more likely, chose not to reveal anything to us. I come home to see my mother, sobbing to the footage of the south tower's collapse. I sobbed too, but mostly because my mother was sobbing (and what little boy doesn't sob when his mother sobs) and also because of the destruction of one of my favorite landmarks to build in Sim City 3000. (I was nine, don't judge.)

I remember the unfolding of the aftermath. I can't remember all of what was going on in my 9 year old mind, but I do remember sensing the shift in the collective conscious...I knew that everything had just completely changed. I remember the inspiring stories of all the congressional body hugging, crying and singing patriotic songs, and remember comments on how unusual that was. I remember the gloom and terror and everybody on Fox News freaking out about it for weeks afterwards, every bomb threat became a headline. I also remember the solidarity displayed by America in the weeks afterwards, the sense of communion I had with other Americans thousands of miles away. I remember the constant replay of the attack footage and, being fascinated by disasters of every stripe, glued to that footage like any time I saw my favorite tornado movies. I was too innocent and removed from events to experience any impact to myself, but I was sober enough to feel the gravitas, and to comprehend somewhat that I was witnessing the unfolding of something very, very important.

15 years have intervened since then, as have two American wars, economic turbulence, the rise of myriad threats to freedom, and the emergence of a global political reality doubly as dense and tense and intricate as any hairtrigger moment in history. As my experiences have accumulated, my brain and body matured, my identity emerged and my understanding deepened, my relationship to 9/11 and to those memories has also evolved.

With the explosion of the internet came Youtube, and with Youtube hundreds and thousands of pieces of footage made publicly available. I would periodically binge-watch these pieces of footage, sometimes for hours at a time. In my comfortable, cushioned middle-class upbringing, this footage was a window onto a foreign world that, while unfamiliar and full of hostility and anger and bloodcurdling hatred, had direct impact on my existance and thus required me to understand it. For years I viewed these pieces of footage and feel a thrill of dramatic excitement like in an action movie. I researched the physics behind the collapse of the towers, I saw the numbers of lives lost, I factualized and intellectulized it. It seemed so fantasy-like, so unreal, like there should be scrolling credits at the end of each video and an interview with actors talking about how making the movie was such an experience.

Then, I discovered the videos of the jumpers.

Everyone has a moment where their innocence is lost. This was mine.

I avoided those videos for a long time, but there came a point I knew that I needed to experience something that they had to offer...that I needed to watch them, and not just watch, but engage with them, to empathize, to visualize, to put myself in the shoes of who I was watching. While it was only imagination coupled with piecing together a reality I had gleaned from pieces of video evidence, it was enough for me to finally comprehend. No longer did these videos seem like fantasy footage from a movie. I realized, in every sense of that word. I REAL-ized it. It was a real-ization of what despair is, what it feels like, what it stems from, what it causes us as humans to do...

I haven't voluntarily watched 9/11 footage since. It has become very painful to relive, to think about. Defining moments are often like that. They come, they leave their gouge marks, and they leave. We sit, we wrangle, we ignore, we refuse, we hurt, we bleed, we cry, we anger. And though some among Americans responded with hatred, there will come a time when we will realize that we must let go. We stand, we accept, we acknowledge, we heal, we smile, we forgive We refuse to remember...but we cannot forget. We will never forget. We will never forget what it meant to be so deeply and irrevocably wounded...and we will never forget that we will heal, and in healing, forgive.

We will never forget.

Forget the stars and stripes and the garish 19^th century march tunes that accompany it. The emblem of my Americanism is my life: taking my freedom of choice, my abundant privilege and my economic and spiritual opportunities and utilizing them in honoring and serving my fellow man, distinctions of nationality, religion or ethnicity be damned. It is in making my everday living after the manner of the example of those firefighters, who went in to save regardless of station in life. This is America. This is how I remember 9/11, and this is how I honor my heritage.

In the Arms of the Glacier

In the Arms of the Glacier

The mountains call me.

Jagged faces blinding

The moon in its rise

Above the stars.

They lure me, those mountains,

The granite monsters

With wildflowers blooming

in their vast arms,

Lakes as fine jewels

Merry twinkling in their ears

Amidst the frowning snow dangling

Like hair.

I live well,

Sitting comfortable in the

Armchair, reading by

Electric light

All the delights of

The untested surround

Me with pleasure.

And yet I yearn

To have my hair

Ruffled freezing

By the moonlit glacier

To bloom bruises

Slipping on loose rock

Above the cliff.

I yearn

To witness

Sunlight glorify anew

The granite face,

While razor rocks

Cut my knees

Upon my bowing.

I yearn

To hear the wolves

Amongst the ragged vastness

Of the trees

Lifting their wild brows

High and creaking above

The winding ridges

To be initiated

Into the great

Brotherhood of the Wilderness,

wherein

Adventure

and Desire

find perfect balance on the peaks.

To be initiated...

What computer

Could stretch the legs, and bring

The warmth of fire,

Strength

and Beauty

in its manmade stream of electrons?

Though comforts happy smile,

the Took calls

To dangerous roads

Where Love and Truth apair dwell.