“They say that every snowflake
is different. If that were true, how could
the world go on? How
could we ever get up off our knees? How could we
ever recover
from the wonder of it?”
~ Jeanette
Winterson, The Passion
The world we live in is a vibrant
kaleidoscope of magic and science, for science is magic that has been placed in
boxes; a deconstruction of wonder. It is this place of wonder my spirituality has
found me, breaking down those walls of distinction to simply be moved by the
beauty of… everything. There are days when I feel like I see the whole world
for what it is for perhaps the first time.
Winter is coming to the land that I
live on, to the city that I live in. In America, Solstice marks the beginning
of our coldest days, which for those of us in the Northeast, usually means snow.
It’s an excuse to snuggle down with loved ones and nest in blankets in the
shelter of our homes. It’s a reason to pull into ourselves and reflect on what we
have gratitude for, and what is important to us.
I also find snow to be quite
beautiful.
There is breathtaking wonder in
falling snowflakes, in the filigree of crystalline symmetry, as the little
frozen worlds slide in to meet each other and catch on edges; each snowflake a
delicate crystal. How amazing it is that they fall into each other, hugging and
holding on to create something solid and larger than itself. Under a blanket of
white, the sleeping earth becomes encased in diamonds of ice.
The sunbeams fall on snow,
momentarily blinding our vision and we must reach into other senses. The
dancing light flits across the surface of earth, refracting and sharpening in
the cold chill of breath. And we smell winter, freezing against our mucus
membranes. And we taste winter in the icy cold within our lungs. And every bare
particle of flesh feels itself retracting against the frosted air. That is what
it means to be alive in snow-drenched winter time. When the sun shines it’s
brilliance we forget the cold, if just for a moment, and bask like lizards in
the reflective gaze.
On Solstice night, we sit through
the longest dark of the year. We’ve watched the days get shorter and we’ve been
turning our porch lights on before making dinner. We’ve stood in bursts of
sunshine and soaked up the solar vitamins in preparation. Winter may just be
beginning, but with its start comes the promise of lengthening days. The air is
cold but the sun is warm, a hope that shines through the intruding chill.
Yet even as I anxiously await the
first flurry of snowfall, I see the pattern of the worlds and know that as the
darkness retreats, snowmelt will warm with the early spring breezes. It will sink
into and feed the ground below us which, in turn, will nourish seedlings so
that they might flourish in our gardens. Then plants and flowers will grow in
warmer sunlight, to nourish our hearts and bodies.
All this is
wonder, beheld in the beauty of a single snowflake.
On the
longest night, we greet this turning. We greet this movement forward, into a
new spring, a breath of freshness in an age-old pattern. What appears to be a
never ending circle when viewed from above, is an ever-winding spiral, a
journey circling around and moving upward with each turn when seen sideways. It’s
a pattern we know, which is how I know that on winter nights, when the
moonlight is strong, the fallen snow will shimmer with the reflection of the
sky above us. The earth we trod will be awash with fields of glittering stars.
That
starlight lives within us, a spark of ancestral matter. And it is this gift I
reflect on most. All the light I need lives within me. All the hope I need is
in me. Every day, I hold fast to this truth and let it illuminate my darkness,
and hope that someday, others will see their own source-light, too.
“Your first parent was a star.”
~
Jeanette Winterson, Weight: The Myth of
Atlas and Heracles
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