Magnificat in Snow

As the year drew to a close, I found myself with a bit of writer’s block.

Christmas came, and it was a good Christmas. Some of the Christmases I’ve had have been nightmares, but this one was fun and lighthearted.  I sat down to write several times, but several times felt like I had nothing to say.

A few days after Christmas, I went to the calling hours for the nicest lady I’ve ever met, and knelt beside the casket, and thanked her one more time for all the kindness she showed me.  I haven’t been able to cry since the Artful Dodgers disappeared last summer, but I finally felt tears in my eyes as I thanked her, and I felt that the tears were a gift from Heaven. I wanted to write about this as well, but when I sat at the keyboard, nothing came out of me.

A few days after that, the snow came back.

Just before Christmas we’d had a sloppy thaw. Rain fell and the ice disappeared. The cat came out of her warming box on the porch and played in the dead weeds in the garden. Adrienne got out her archery supplies and shot some arrows at the bullseye in the sunshine in between showers. I gave Jimmy’s boy his Christmas present: a suction cup arrow set with its own target and a set of plastic soft drink cans to shoot at, so that he could practice archery without meddling with Adrienne’s things. It felt as if spring had come early, without any isolated January or colorless February to suffer though first.

But then, just after the Feast of the Holy Innocents, the weather turned bitter again and the snow came back with a vengeance. Just about two hours away, on Lake Erie, there was such a terrible windstorm that the waves were whitecapped as if it was the ocean. One side of the lake, the Ohio side, became so shallow that people were walking on gravel that was usually far below the water, finding old shipwrecks and an algae-crusted snowmobile that had once fallen through the ice. On the other side of the lake, the New York side, lake water vomited up onto the shore and coated all the trees and buildings in a thick glaze of dirty ice. Down here in Northern Appalachia, we got a narrow band of Lake Effect snow that poured on some towns and not others. There were seven inches of snow overnight in Mingo Junction and Wintersville. Six here in Steubenville. Only two across the river in Weirton. I went to bed expecting that the snow would not even cover the lawn, and woke up to the whole world muffled in a thick white comforter, with still more coming down.

Michael left early and trudged the mile to work without waking me, because the roads were invisible, and I couldn’t have gotten the snow off the car in time to drive him anyway. Adrienne and I slept late. We went outside to crunch in the snow on the sidewalk and make footprints, just as we did when she was little. The cat sat on the porch rail, sulking, looking as if she blamed me for somehow causing the storm over the Great Lakes and freezing her food and water dishes again. But eventually, she joined us, bounding back and forth between our tracks. She pounced on the snowdrifts as if she wanted to punish them; then she leaped out of the snow in shocked surprise, and we laughed, and I suddenly wanted to write again.

I wanted to tell you how wonderful and holy and strange all of our lives are.

I wanted to tell you that you and I are important. That the battles you and I fight are battles that God sees. That Heaven is waiting for you, not far away somewhere, but close at hand in your day to day life. That’s the only place you could ever find Heaven.

You can search this world from one end to the other, and you will never find a Christianity that isn’t embodied in a human life. Such a thing can’t exist. Christianity is not a theory or a theology; it’s a religion. Religions are made of people. There is no pure, unadulterated Catholicism somewhere, which you can aspire to and live without your body, your culture, and your experience being a part of your religious practice. That isn’t real. The only way you can ever be a Catholic is to be yourself. The only way you could ever work out your salvation is to work it out in your day-to-day doings. The only cross you can carry to Heaven is the one you’re carrying anyway. The only hagiography you could ever live, is the story of your life. And that’s good, because your life is beautiful and precious.

For the longest time, I didn’t have a life.

No, that’s not fair. I did have a life. If you happen to live in near isolation with no friends and a chronic illness, that’s still a life. When I was bedbound much of the time from severe pain and fatigue  with my misdiagnosed condition, that was a life. When I could only think about being little Adrienne’s mother and wishing I was the mother to several other children as well, that was life. In the last few years of the menacing neighbor‘s terminal illness, when she was stalking us so badly I could barely go outside and I felt like I was  a prisoner, that was a life. God was there with me, in all of that. But I have a different kind of life now.  I have the kind of life where you go places and talk to people. I’ve even found some friends. I’m not always happy, but I often am. I haven’t wanted to die in the longest time. But I’m not too afraid of what will happen after I die either. That is new, for me. I like it.

May you find Heaven, in your own life.

May you see all the beautiful icons of God all around you, in your day-to-day life. May you see them in people. May you see them in animals. May you see them in snow. May you see them in the garden. May you see them in the towns and cities and mountains that surround you. May you see them in the dark. May you even see them in your grief. May you be lucky enough to sometimes glimpse them in a church, but never stop seeking when you walk out of that church. May your life be a picture of God.

The Lord bless you and keep you, that you may bless Him through your neighbor. The LORD let his face shine upon you, that you may be gracious back to Him, wherever you see His face. The Lord look upon you kindly and give you peace, that you may spread peace to your neighbor.

May your soul proclaim the greatness of the Lord, and your spirit exalt in the God Who Saves. May the Lord look with favor on us, no longer servants but friends, and may all generations call us blessed. May the Mighty One do great things for us, for Holy is God’s Name.

The name of God is Emmanuel, God-with-us, and God is with us now.

Life is good.