First snow, gentle reminder

Last week I woke to sunlight sparkling on hoar frost.  I love hoar frost. When I was a little girl in Alaska we rode the bus to school. There was a magic season- it must have been January or February, when the sun was out and the snow was fresh.  Any earlier in the winer we roadto school in pitch dark, morning and afternoon.  Great beginnings for me,  a woman with seasonal affect disorder.

But on those magical mornings when the sun shone and the moisture content was just right and the planets all lined up, the hoar frost would outline each branch, each fence post, each wire.  Delicate white crystals poised for a moment in perfect rest.  I would press my nose against the cold bus window and inhale the beauty of the wonder before my eyes.  Early morning sunbeams sparkled, soon their heat would melt the fairyland but for now, the bitter cold kept all in pure suspension.

For this small girl who struggled with the weight of winter, hoar frost outside the bus window was a gift— lifting me and bearing me through the long, dark season.

Now I'm a grown-up. Today I hurried to collect books for our prayer time and library videos for return and mail to be deposited and the computer for some time with high speed access.... as I hurried into yet another full day, I stopped for a moment. I paused as water pauses in that brief solid state of frost.

Like the lovely crystals that sparkled across my yard, I won't last forever. I will someday feel the sun's rays one last time and be changed.  Hoar frost melts into the earth- earth to earth, dust to dust.  But there is also the changing from glory to glory, "But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit."

Someday I'll be fully human and fully glorious but for now I am merely in the process. But while I'm here, I want to behold with an open face...the glory of the Lord.  The glory of the hoar frost on the golden grass, the first dusting of snow on a porch rail cap.  An old ore cart, from a mine where men descended into dark to dig gold ore from the heart of the earth, transformed into beauty with the glory of the first snow laid gently on its weather beaten surface.



Some days I feel life-beaten, rushed and too busy even in my quiet retirement life. It's my nature to rush from one good thing to another.  On this golden morning, my spirit paused, poised for those moments of wonder.  I pressed my nose against the window of my memories and once again, reveled in beauty.



Pause with me. Notice the light. Look for the beauty.  Breathe deep.

Neither the hoar frost nor the life on this sphere,
last forever.