This long hard winter seems endless. Despite the breaks offered by the arrival of a few relatively warm days, it is hard to believe in the promise of spring.
The skin that covers my hands bursts in protest against days of freezing temperatures, producing small but painful fissures. Even bundled up against the cold I feel the winds going through my winter jacket and I get my feet wet sloshing through puddles.
I feel impatient about putting on heavy clothing every time I leave my house.
But a great blizzard brings with it some redeeming virtues. The new-fallen snow, three feet of it in some drifts, has a beauty about it that is altogether special, at least before the dirt sullies it. People, young and old, walk down plowed streets finding delight in the splendor all around them. Some sporty types convert these passageways into avenues for cross country skiing.
Even the arduous labor of digging out my car becomes a social experience filled with good feeling. Two neighbors come over to help me and take on the task with gusto. Soon we have cleared the snow off the roof and hood, freed the wheels, shoveled out the snow surrounding the vehicle and thrown it to the other side of the street.
Then I am ready to gun the car in the effort to break out to the roadway. It works; I’m in the clear, and the space can be occupied until someone else comes along and takes it when I leave. I resist the impulse to place a barrel there illegally, to save the space against poachers. The area is public, after all; it belongs to the whole community, even if someone else sends me around city blocks searching for another parking space.
I relish conversing with the two neighbors who help me dig. They are decades younger than I, one a fellow writer, the other a high-powered freelance entrepreneur. Gathering together around a common task on a bright, sun-lit morning brings out the good feeling among us. We banter about the storms and about our neighbors, all in a lighthearted spirit infused by the joy of our task.
Where is the spiritual meaning in this experience? Is there anything about the snowstorm and our response to it that goes beyond?
Surely the wonder of it all rates reflection. Nature continues to provide nourishment for us. The water that comes down from the sky in frozen form renews the earth. And the storm presents us with the gift of panoramic beauty, white coating for the landscape.
The coming together of people in response to the snowfall is worth thinking about. I love the community of feeling that results from the shared experience of natural forces. We have something in common that brings us out of our houses and gives us something to talk about together.
The austerity is worth something to the soul. The cold, the inconvenience, the exercise against resistance: all count.
Perhaps these experiences of natural beauty, struggle, and social cohesion are not the most profound soundings of spirituality. But they do have their own depths deserving of contemplation.
The storm can, of course, be seen as simply the cause of widespread inconvenience. It strands some of us and forces us to miss connections on trips and disrupts our work. Even many of us hardy New Englanders, at this point in the winter, wince at the prospect of yet another storm.
The searching soul, however, can find matter for pondering weather just like all the other areas of daily life. What happens in our world outside has its meaning for the world within.
Even when we remain inside the house and let the storm outside simply accompany whatever we choose to do, that has its virtues too.
This, at any rate, is what Billy Collins, currently poet laureate of the United States, suggests in a poem called “Snow.” About snow falling he writes:
“It falls so indifferently / into the spacious white parlor of the world, / if I were sitting here reading / in silence, / reading the morning paper / or reading Being and Nothingness, / not even letting the spoon / touch the inside of the cup, / I have a feeling / the snow would even go perfectly with that.”
Richard Griffin