This morning as I was walking over to the church, I was struggling. This was not an emotional struggle, but one born of the winter and its coldness. . . I gingerly walked across the driveway and out into the parking lot. The ground under my feet was slippery—very slippery. Each step required careful examination and thought. Sure a fresh powder of snow fell last night, and that helped me walk a bit because it provided something to ‘crunch,’ but it was not enough. It was slippery, and I worried that I would fall if I was not alert to where I put my steps. I tried to follow the tracks other cars have made, but that was not very helpful either. . .
To compound my footing-problem, my breath was fogging up my glasses and making it hard to see. Each new breath coated my glasses a bit more until the world outside was a white haze of shapes and blobs of color. To compensate for the ‘fogged up’ glasses, and while still trying not to fall, I looked over the frame of my glasses at the church. I thought that if I changed my point of reference that I would make it; that it would help. But that did not help much either. The sunshine on a bright morning was reflecting off the snow and blinding me all the more.
I was struggling with the elements of winter.
Now don’t get me wrong: I was not getting angry at all. I knew that this is how winter progresses. This is normal for February. And regardless of what the groundhog thinks, spring is coming. It will be here soon. The snow will melt and the path to the church will be clear for me. The beauty of a snowy white yard will be a distant memory. It will be gone until later in 2021 when we think about how great it would be to have a white Christmas again.
As I sat down and began my day the words of David Steindl-Rast came to mind as I chuckled about the struggle of walking to the church in the snow. David's work on gratefulness reminded me of the joy I felt in autumn when the first snow fall happened. Even as I was unable to see this morning as I walked to the church, I wondered where could I practice my faith differently; gratefully?
David wrote:
“We have thousands of opportunities every day to be grateful: for having good weather, to have slept well last night, to be able to get up, to be healthy, to have enough to eat. . . There’s opportunity upon opportunity to be grateful; that’s what life is.”
It is easy to focus on that which presents us with daily challenges and to become angry because of this challenges. It is easy, and also understandable, to get bogged down in moments like I just described where walking (or completing a basic task) is challenging and irritating. I did not want to walk this way, and I don’t think that you would either. But I was in that moment. And, as David reminded me, I slept well last night. My breakfast hit the spot. The sun shone gorgeously on the white church yard.
The doctor’s appointment that I went for my aching knee revealed no damage to the structure of the joints or tissue. All that my doctor found was some arthritis that is related to the surgery from 2018 that I had. A cortisone injection helped me with the discomfort, and I walked normally out the Health and Wellness Pavilion pain free. I walked normally to the church also this morning—and I am grateful. I wonder how much harder it might have been to walk to church this morning if I was still in pain? I had the opportunity to be grateful for the substance of my week when I could also choose to be frustrated or see the events of the day only through a negative perspective.
I wonder, where could you practice David’s gratefulness posture? And when you practice it, what might God remind you about?
Blessings
Rev. Derek
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