Theophany at Jefferson Lake

I went down to Jefferson Lake, to see the ice.

We’ve had two very warm winters in a row– worrying winters, winters so mild the maple sap didn’t flow in February the way maple is supposed to. Winters that make you remember that the world is burning to death. But this year, just after Thanksgiving, it got cold and stayed cold for a week. There was rain and blowing snow, not enough snow to make the world beautifully clean, but enough to remind you that Christmas was coming.

It’s all going to thaw and get muddy again next week, and I don’t know what will happen the week after that. I am trying not to look too far ahead.

Trouble is, it’s winter, and I’ve come down with my winter anxiety. Anxiety is a disease that makes you think ahead, not in a good way. I woke up in a panic over nothing.

When I get anxious, I simply have to go out and talk to nature. I wanted to go to the waterfall, but the waterfall is in Pennsylvania and it’s rifle season for the white tailed deer in Pennsylvania. I didn’t have a scrap of clothing that was bright enough orange to make it safe to go hiking on that side of the Ohio river.

I drove out to Jefferson Lake, near Richmond.

I didn’t wear my warm winter hiking things; I was so anxious I left the house without them. I drove down the Cadiz Road to Wintersville, worrying, thinking about taxes and student loans and how we’d afford Christmas gifts. Then I rounded the bend and took 43 to the middle of nowhere, fretting, panicking about South Korea and North Korea and Palestine and Russia, nuclear winter and global warming and whether the bird flu would make its way to Jefferson County.

I drove down that winding road that always makes me feel like the car is going to skid off into a farmer’s field or a stand of pine trees. Around that bend to the state park. The forest was awash in color the last time I saw it, but now it’s drab brown for the winter months.

I pulled in by that great big green lake, which didn’t look frozen at first. It was too colorful to be frozen. I’d expected the lake to be white with frost.

Then I realized that the water wasn’t moving.

Water is alive, and it always moves. It flows a certain way in a noisy crick or a great big wide river, and it ripples and dances on a lake like this. Ice is not alive. Ice is still. The lake wasn’t rippling. There were no tiny wrinkles on the surface; it was a sheet of perfect ice.

I got out of the car, wishing I’d worn my long underwear under my jeans and my thermal top instead of my  lighter one. I changed from my driving slippers into my hiking shoes, even though the air was so painfully cold I knew I wouldn’t get far. The wind rushed upon me like a hungry ghost, gnawing my cheeks and the backs of my hands as I struggled into my gloves.

The sun didn’t twinkle on the water as it does in summer and spring. It gleamed on the ice.

Another gust of wind tormented me as I walked out to the little boat dock.

The dock didn’t rock back and forth with the water; it was still.

The glassy ice shone all around me. Under the ice was deep cobalt-colored water and bright emerald green duckweed, fixed in place. Here and there were bubbles, rigid like pearls.  Around the dock where hieroglyphs scratched into the ice by the wind, where the water had been rippling when it froze.

I threw a pebble onto the lake. Instead of breaking the surface, it bounced.

Behind me was a pipe draining the cricks from the state park into the lake. The water was still moving there, a constant trickle. It flowed out over the surface of the pond and then became part of the glassy cover.

Before me, the sun shone so brightly on the middle of the lake that it hurt to look at. Beyond that, on the far shore, the forest rose up drab brown. Above the brown was the blue of the firmament. Above the firmament was God.

All of the frantic movement of time is spread out before the Lord, all visible at once, all known, all understood, a thousand years passing as a day. And at the same time, the Lord is a being to Whom the ripples on the lake are still. All of God, eternal, without beginning without end, observes the moment when a ripple becomes a line on the ice. Eons move on and on, and are an instant to Him. But He is also eternally present in the Here and Now. All of God at the beginning of the world. All of God at the end of the world. All of God unto the ages of ages. All of God that eternity cannot contain. All of God in the womb of the Blessed Virgin. All of God a Zygote and an infant and a king entering Jerusalem on a donkey’s colt. All of God so scandalously intimate with all of Mankind, that of course He had to die a scandalous death, as we do. All of God in a bubble on a lake.

Eternally admiring the rigid lake with me.

Eternally in my panic and anxiety with me.

Eternally with me somewhere up ahead in my journey, in the place where the anxiety will fade away again, and I will be happy.

It all made sense for just a second.

I drove home, feeling something that wasn’t anxiety.