"……But here we are, working our way down the driveway,
one shovelful at a time.
We toss the light powder into the clear air.
We feel the cold mist on our faces.
And with every heave we disappear
and become lost to each other
in these sudden clouds of our own making,
these fountain-bursts of snow.

This is so much better than a sermon in church,
I say out loud, but Buddha keeps on shoveling.
This is the true religion, the religion of snow,
and sunlight and winter geese barking in the sky,
I say, but he is too busy to hear me……."
~Billy Collins

I hit the alarm and drifted back asleep only to wake up with the clear sense that something was different about this morning. As my eyes adjusted to wakefulness I realized that the usual morning light was tinged with blue. I sat up and looked out the window to see the rooftop covered with snow, the breaking morning reflecting off its whiteness causing that unnameable blue when sky and snowy ground meet. It was really only a couple of inches of snow, and it will be gone probably by the end of the day, but nevertheless it is the first snow of the season. A day to mark on the calendar which some will celebrate while others curse.

This excerpt of the poem Shoveling Snow with Buddha calls to mind, I think, one of the great gifts of snow and the winter months. Snow calls us to a contemplative place, allows us to see water and its gifts in a new way, as something solid, fluffy, malleable. What usually drips, floats, or evaporates, becomes visible and lasting…at least for awhile. Snow causes us to slow down, to stare into the middle distance. As I look out my window right now the flakes, clumped together in community, sit precariously on the now bare branches of the trees. Their whiteness provides dressing where leaves have let go. I somehow think it must be comforting to the trees.

We've just come through a very intense time. Elections are over for the most part. The economy still rests on a roller coaster. Thanksgiving will be here in a few days and the Christmas season is visible in malls everywhere. And so it seems the contemplative snow has arrived just in time. Just in time to slow us down, to encourage us to walk more gently because are footsteps can become so very visible. The snow has come just in time to remind us that water can wash us clean and can also blanket us with beauty. Like most things, it has many properties, some we can see and others that are only visible to us at very special times.It is good to be reminded.

Sometimes it take the poets and the Buddhists among us help us to remember to stay in the present moment long enough to learn the lesson.