Snow and Habits

It happened overnight. Gretna went from green to white in a few hours. I imagine that this overnight snowfall would seem much more magical to us if we were strangers to prairie winters. We are creatures of habit. Most of us form practices that remain relatively unchanged throughout our lifetime. Our morning and evening rituals of hygiene, the way we prepare our bodies and equipment for a game of hockey, our yearly gatherings and gestures during the season of Advent and Christmas – all these regularities bear witness to our human nature and its need for routine and habit.
Thrown into the mix of this need for routine is our surrounding environment. In one sense, the four distinct seasons we have, in the prairies, conforms to our desire for pattern and regularity. Like clockwork, we are pulled through the long winter, into the warm breezes of spring; then we are set before the sun of summer, with beach sand to warm our feet; and finally we see the beauty of fall and its colors. But in a different way, we are also living in a constantly shifting climate/environment.
With the flick of a switch (somewhere up there!), Gretna went from Fall to Winter overnight. We went from patches of brown, green and yellow to pure white and fluffy. I recall, from my childhood, the magic of this time of year. I went from imagining a play fight with bears to thinking of building snow forts, igloos, and play fights with penguins. In a night, a whole world has changed for us in Gretna. But for so many of us adults, this magic newness has worn off for the most part. There are so many things that never change in our lives. The flow of life continues on; the only changes involve us in putting on winter tires, trading a shovel for a rake, and dressing up warm. Something tugged at my heart, this season, when the heavens chose to cover us in white in a few hours.
As our lives repeat the same motions, day after day, we might feel tempted to join the philosopher in saying, “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun.” But this last snowfall should remind us that newness is possible. A whole new world can envelop us in a moment. That is what this season is all about. That is at the core of Advent. As the days get shorter, colder and darker, there is a new reality breaking-into this one. Advent is the season that bears witness to a new reality breaking into our own dreary-repetitiveness. The light of Christ has vanquished the darkness. We can awaken to a new world if we merely open our hearts to the light of Bethlehem.
My best friend’s daughter died on the first day of Advent. While our whole congregation was cheering for her, with eyes closed and hands folded, little precious Morgan opened her eyes to the new world being made possible by the Christ-child. And as my friends wake up, in snow-covered Winnipeg, they (like us) encounter a new possibility. Amidst the darkness of grief and the monotony of life without their daughter, they (like us) open their eyes to a whole new world that was made possible just over two thousand years ago when a little boy was born in a stable. Open your eyes this season and see that, as if overnight, a whole new world has been made possible!




















