January 9, 2011
I did something today that I haven’t done in years; I went to church. It isn’t quite the typical church when you think about church. I went to a UU church to hear a naturalist and friend speak. It was his turn to lead the “worship” (more like thoughts for the day.) Mike, whom spoke, is a scientist, naturalist, educator. He has years of experience behind him, a most profound love of nature and a deep-rooted spiritual connection to the environment around him. He sees perfection in the oddest of places. Today he read a description of winter that he got from an advertisement from Lee Auto Mall, it was beautiful. He read many quotes, said many wonderful things about the beauty-both inner and outer- that abounds in the winter. It is a time of cold, dark, hardship and fragile beauty in the snowflake.
It all resonated so clearly within me. I like all the seasons, but there is something about the winter that I find most captivating. It is stark, it is a contrast between white and black, it is bleak and sparkling, it is deadly and restful. I find it is the time that I sit in retrospection; it is when I feel the smallness of my place in the circle of the universe the most clearly.
Two days ago the temperature was in the single digits, the back drop of Russian novel weather. Here at my home, the trees were grey with the finest covering of frost, not too noticeable, but there. As I drove into work and closer to the ocean with its steamy warmth the trees were covered with a thicker layer of crystalline whiteness. Every branch, dried weed and blade of grass glimmered with magic and I could imagine a million tiny rainbows refracting in the sunlight. Who cannot accept the beauty of winter during moments like that.