It's snowing tonight

All week the snow has been melting, slowly pulling back to reveal wet ground and pavement, a hundred shades of gray and brown.
Tonight the snow came back, wet and heavy, maybe even enough to resurrect my plans for skiing in the new year with my sister..
It's funny, I think, how snow changes things. I was looking out the window as my aunt drove tonight, and was transfixed by what I saw..surprised to be admiring things I never would have noticed without the help of the snow..the huge black&white billboard on Getty street, some ad for the hospital. Normally a blight, suddenly framed by a gradient dusting of white snow, forming a halo pattern across the face of the happy patient. It was somehow luminous. More surprising to me was the way my my eyes were nourished by the tangled weeds on the barbed-wire security fence surrounding the factory that makes military vehicles (normally I feel distressed when I pass by that place)..coated in the falling snow, the weeds made a silvery web of intricate designs..the barbed wire seemed more like sculpture..
Snow can make even ugly things..different.

Currently ReadingTraveling Mercies : Some Thoughts on FaithBy Anne Lamottsee related



I walked into the living room to see my daughters busy with the nativity scene on top of my piano.. I started to scold them for leaning on the instrument and playing with grandma's breakable things, but when they turned around, my resolve melted.

"But they all came to see baby Jesus.", Willow said while Ginger nodded.
Behind them in the stable, small plastic Cinderella characters(Willow's first Christmas gift this year, at present time THE MOST treasured toys in our home) stood in an arc around the manger.
I took the nativity down so they could reach it, and now the figurines trek from castle to manger, manger to castle. And everyone is pleased.
Sometimes I get so caught up in discipline and consistency for the *result* that I miss the good stuff that can happen during disobedience..I'm glad I didn't miss it this time. Do you have stories about your own children - times they were caught, almost punished, then you saw something more profound going on?
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I'm almost done with Traveling Mercies (by Ann Lamott), and I have loved it. I have read and re-read many of the stories, and today this quote stood out to me. I admit my ignorance concerning the author, Rumi, but like what he/she has to say here:
Keep walking, though there's no place to get to.
Don't try to see through the distances. That's not
for human beings.
Move within, but don't move the way fear makes
you move.
Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and
frightened.
Don't open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the
ground.
-RUMI
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