Uplifting Snowfall

I cannot follow the path of a single raindrop as it falls from the sky.  But snow on a calm, dark morning?  It is both possible and delightful to watch a single, perfect, meandering snowflake lick the top of the lamp post as it wends its way to the ground in front of me.

This morning's perfect snow is an early Christmas gift, even if a thousand other Lincoln adults will grumble about its inconvenient aftermath--slowed traffic, slick overpasses, the prospect of shoveling.  Even Richard--the Woods Park wanderer who whispers the rosary on his rounds (and shouts out his "HELLO, JANE!" much louder and earlier than I'd care for), even Richard today lamented the snow, wanting safe travels on Christmas Eve.

But what, really, has ever been safe about Christmas?  About childbirth?  About poor people in unsanitary conditions having medical procedures?  Jesus' birth was never about safe travels.   That's why I love the later story of him accepting, essentially, a foot rub with Chanel No. 5. . . a lavish, wasteful, audacious moment in the midst of war-filled, hunger-filled, dangerous times.

And so, I'll take the snowflakes.  I'll open my mouth in hopes that the perfect, icy geometry may alight on my tongue.  I will give over to my imagination, wondering what part of the universe, whose stories are imprinted in that perfect snowflake that is now a part of me. This beautiful morning,   I'll take the muted quiet that comes with snow, the first pawprints upon sidewalks, the slow descent of frozen precipitation that softens everything--the landscape, the sharp tongues, the divides, the man whose name I refuse to speak (and, no, it's not satan).

This world could use some softening, after all.  And I, for one, will not stand in the way.