Yesterday morning was one of those rare mild January mornings in Minnesota. Today the temperature has already dipped back down with a big "gotcha" on its breath, saying don’t think it is spring just yet, my friends. But it was nice to have a day where our shoulders weren’t scrunched up around our ears.

It was so nice I walked out onto our deck, coffee cup in hand, to take a look into our little pond where the gold fish now live year round. These particular gold fish, unlike the expensive koi we originally purchased to live in this pond, are now on their third year of life. Last year they spent the winter indoors but, truth be told, they had grown too big for their small temporary home….an abandoned aquarium found in the basement. At forty-nine cents-a-piece, these fish are miracles. And so this fall we bought a small heater that keeps their water warm enough to keep them alive and swimming. It is perhaps a strange thing to do, perhaps not energy efficient, but these fish have now been with us for so long that the often ordinary goldfish exit out of this world never was an option.

There is something comforting to me to know they are out there swimming even when the temperatures dip well below zero. The snow has piled up all around the pond, ice has formed on the eaves of the house, but I know that if I need to catch a glimpse of orange aliveness, I need only walk a few steps out my door. Life is happening out there even if the odds seem against it.

I am reminded of one of my favorite poems by Wendell Berry: So, friends, every day do something that won’t compute. Love the Lord. Love the world. Work for nothing. Take all that you have and be poor. Love someone who does not deserve it. Denounce the government and embrace the flag. Hope to live in that free republic for which it stands. Give your approval to all you cannot understand. Praise ignorance, for what man has not encountered he has not destroyed. Ask the questions that have no answer. Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias. Say that your main crop is the forest, that you did not plant, that you will not live to harvest. Say that the leaves are harvested when they have rotted into the mold. Call that profit.Put your faith in the two inches of humus that will build under the trees every thousand years. Expect the end of the world. Laugh. Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts. Practice resurrection."

Less than a five dollar investment three years ago swims in my backyard with what I might imagine as joy.When I see them, I laugh. I laugh at the irrationality of it all. I’m practicing.