Days 23-25 - A Careful Snow

   It was a careful snow. Each flake selected its landing place.

   The snow fell slight as a sewing needle. It stitched a thin garment across the lap of my grandmother's front yard as I watched, amid 1955's winter, hypnotized by Beauty.

   A great truck lurched down the road. Flying mud stained the satin. I was mad at the truck. Why couldn't Smooth endure? 

   I'd never seen snow until age twelve because I grew up where it never fell. Westwood Village, California, five miles from the Pacific, was home to sun, and soaring eucalyptus trees.

   A crueler climate greeted me in my new home: Toledo, Ohio. For the next thirty years, I  hated the snow that had stolen my California. A fool, I resented something I couldn't change.

   All we can adjust is our attitude. But it's almost as hard to alter that as it is to stop winter.

   Every Ohio autumn, I feared winter's onset because I never accepted my attitude as something that I could change. 

   Dr. Dennis O'Grady writes that "Probably only 20 percent of people are happy [because] people actually fight to block pleasure...Fear is a big part of the problem."

   Veteran actor Betty White says that she knows too many people "who are afraid to be happy." 

   Religion teaches us we're bad and need salvation. Pleasure is sinful.

   Why? Change is certain, why not celebrate what pleasure we have and find more? The snow will be dirtied. Blood will stain the caregivers clothes. Scars will find the farmer's hands. The lover's heart will be hurt.

   Only courage can redeem us. 

   Pleasure arrives when we accept change. Joy accompanies reveling in whatever occurs.

    Wrinkle smoothed sheets and you will find another beauty.Disturb ordinary rythms and reveal the extraordinary.

   Can this be true of death? The funerals in my best friend's home, New Orleans, reflect a culture that understands.

   Death is grieved, musically, on the march to the funeral and celebrated on the return trip.

   Suffering is endured in its arrival and celebrated as it departs - even as we know it will return.

   "...I suppose most of us will kiss/ a terrible scar to prove we can live with it," Stephen Dunn wrote.

   Can we accept painful change as a gift of life rather than something to be feared?

   My thirty awful autumns in Toledo testify that I didn't grasp that wisdom then. If I had, imagine how my life would have been enhanced?

   Obviously, trucks will scatter mud on the whitest snow. Naturally, a patient of yours will suffer. Whenever we take courage we experience a chapter of pain. 

   But, I write these words amid strength. "The case for suffering is always/ overrated by those whose health/ is good, whose houses are calm," Dunn writes.

   Spread your boldest truth into the careful snow around your "house" and you will learn if you have the courage to hold fast to that truth.

-Erie Chapman  

Photograph - Smooth & Wrinkled #2, 1981 - copyright Erie Chapman 2011

Comments

[Marily]

There were times when I felt... I could never go through this again, 'twas hard, stressful, and have drained all of me. Should go undercover, incognito... feels good huh... 'til when? in this fallen world of ours.

Only in His Peace I could rest and find courage, trusting all the way even in the midst of life's snow storms, stained careful snow, gnawing pain drilling through and through patients deeply nailing nurses, young and not so young fading lives afflicted, flawed promises of retirement, imperfect healthy lifestyle as I add years... even then I could rejoice always for He has overcome the world. On His shoulders cozy and warm, the safest corner, I feel on me from time to time the brush tingle of His Spirit.

[Karen York]

I think courage comes from the practice of living in a spirit of gratitude and grace. If I accept that I have and am nothing without grace, then I am grateful for whatever condition I find myself. When I live in an attitude of expectancy and entitlement, then I am bitter and disappointed with just about everything. Notice I said it is "the practice of living in gratitude and grace", for it doesn't come naturally. It is a continual choice. A favorite verse of mine from Psalm 143 - "If you wake me each morning with the sound of your loving voice, I'll go to sleep each night trusting in you." Perhaps that's the secret...

[~liz Wessel]

Erie, your poetic images and the poignancy of your message seem to flow forth from a core inner strength. You have befriended what turns and burns within you with resolve. Your challenge is not easy to shrug off and for this I thank you. These words from David Whyte come to my mind, “Courage is the ability to cultivate a relationship with the unknown and anything and anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you.”

[candace nagle]

I love the serendipity of life. Just before reading this essay, I was reading the following poem by Alice Walker.

Expect Nothing -- Alice Walker

Expect Nothing

Expect nothing. Live frugally
On surprise.
Become a stranger
To need of pity
Or, if compassion be freely
Given out
Take only enough
Stop short of urge to plead
Then purge away the need.

Wish for nothing larger
Than your own small heart
Or greater than a star;
Tame wild disappointment
With caress unmoved and cold
Make of it a parka
For your soul.

Discover the reason why
So tiny a human midget
Exists at all
So scared unwise
But expect nothing. Live frugally
On surprise.

~ Alice Walker ~

(Anything We Love Can Be Saved)