Snow

We have not had any snow here this winter. We have hardly even had winter. Yesterday, on February 1st, the temperatures were in the low middle 70's.

I don't mind that we're not freezing or dealing with ice or slush. But it still seems odd. The flowering trees are already blooming. Things just seem "off."

We like for life to be a bit more predictable. We like for winter to be wintry and summer to be summery. Variations put us off balance. I've noticed that even though the weather is rather nice, people have negative things to say. More than one person has mentioned fearing a frigid spring rather than rejoicing in the warm and sunny now. The conventional wisdom is that this warm weather now will have to be balanced by cold weather later, maybe an inconvenient later.

So we go through the church year, too. It just can't be Easter all the time. We move through the religious seasons and spiritual affections deliberately, remembering that, as it says in Ecclesiastes (and as sung by The Byrds), there is a time for every season under heaven. We move through the seasons and experience them deeply because we know what season it is. We know what we do in Lent (or at least what we're supposed to do) and to do otherwise seeems strange.

And so we continue to walk that line between being totally predictable (and perhaps then stodgy and uncreative and unthinking and dull) which brings a certain amount of comfor, to being off-balance, which is definitely not comfortable. The world can be chaotic, and so we want some things to be the same, no matter what. The problem comes when our desire for comfort stunts our growth and stifles creativity. We have to be put off balance sometimes so that we will engage life and grow.

But meanwhile, I wouldn't mind a little snow! It's February!