Weather or Not, Here Comes Lent!

It's snowing. Again.

Normally, I like snow. I certainly prefer it to the broiling heat of summer, when the sun glares down on you through a haze of humidity and all you can do is sit around the house in survival mode. When it's 25 or so degrees out, and the snow is falling in big, fat flakes that cover all the bare branches of the trees with a coat of white, there's no wind, and it looks as if all the world is drowsing -- that's beautiful. I don't even mind shovelling in such circumstances, because as dusk falls the street lights pick up the sparkle in the snow and it looks like "poor man's diamonds." It's almost a moment for prayer.

That hasn't been our weather since the beginning of March. Today's blizzard is the third in two weeks -- March 1, March 9, and now today -- and though at the moment there's no wind, it's supposed to pick up considerably and stay that way for the rest of the week. I still haven't recovered from Wednesday's storm, when we had sustained winds of 40 mph and gusts near 80. I stayed in all day; my poor husband was the one who went outside and coped with the waist-high drifts and the brutal winds. To top it all off, Jim, despite 25 years of living in New England, still thinks like a New Yorker, that we are supposed to have crocus in our garden by March. (Hasn't happened yet. We usually see crocus sometime in April, forsythia around the first of May, and lily-of-the-valley -- known elsewhere as "Maybells" -- in June. IOW, we're a month behind almost everywhere else, except maybe Canada.)

I'm trying to find some spiritual benefit in all this, but all I can think is that last week, I missed church due to my cough, and this week, I'll miss church due to the weather. The final two Sundays before Lent, and I'm missing church. This does not bode well for my spiritual state, during a time that always brings its own struggles, when you definitely don't need anything extra to have to cope with. Like taxes. Or weather. Or the commuter bus breaking down three times in a week, as it did to Jim this week. (When he mentioned that to the bus company yesterday evening, they told him they'd give him a free bus pass for next week. Small compensation for getting home at 7:30 p.m....)

Podvig takes many forms, I guess...