JohnLines

Snow beginner.

Yesterday, as it snowed, life slowed.

Somewhere, in the minds of those who didn’t have to venture out, there may have been a sense of unimaginable joy.  Of unexpected freedom.  Of the chains of the everyday being broken.

Trust me, you don’t have to be in school to feel this.  It’s been a long time since I paid attention to the TV scrawl with closing announcements.  (I didn’t know there was a school named St. Cripsin’s of the Hollow Woods ...?)

Why is this?

Snow, deep snow, is a fresh start after a complete stop.  It is beginner’s mind.  Where else could this joy come from? 

It is a all-too-infrequent reminder that being takes precedence over doing.

Soon the snow in the picture above, from our backyard, will have squirrel tracks in it.  Then dog tracks.  The grooves of the familiar will wear it down.  Doing will once again replace being.

Enjoy it while it lasts.

Because it won’t.

In praise of sauntering.

 

Our here in the burbs, it’s unusual to see someone sauntering.  Oh sure, I see people walking all the time — for exercise.  Walking for exercise is not sauntering.  Walking for exercise injects a grim determination into the act and creates the illusion that one is actually going somewhere.

However,  sauntering in my neighborhood is likely to get you arrested.  It is loitering’s second cousin.  In the burbs, sauntering is synonymous with casing the joint.

That said, I have had the chance to renew my sauntering — now that we are once again a dog household.  And the dog and I saunter in sanctioned space, conservation land not far from here.

(Quick aside:  Dogs deserve their status as our best friends for at least two reasons. 

Simply paying attention.

I officiated at a burial yesterday, of a Korean War veteran, at Highland cemetery.

The day could not have been more perfect. Seamless blue sky, whisper of a breeze, seventy degrees. We were in the newer section of the cemetery near the tree line. The birds did what the always do, no matter what we humans are up to: they sang.

There are few pieces of ritual more powerful than the folding of the flag. It is done with such exquisite care, such deliberateness, such mindfulness. It is mesmerizing.

There are few pieces of scripture more well-known than the 23rd Psalm. But in the right place, at the right time, it explodes with meaning.

Taps has only four notes. Yet those four simple notes sink like arrows into the heart.

Strange how it takes mortality to catch our frantic minds, to get our attention. But when it does, the simplest of things become transcendent.

No wonder the birds sing, no matter what we’re up to.