Dear Folks,

In the winter of 1996, a great snow fell on the east coast.  It started quietly, the flakes so small and crystalline that you couldn’t see them unless you looked up at the streetlights or down toward the slowly whitening pavement.  The forecasters expected winds to sweep the storm out to sea after a couple of hours, so most people went about their January business as usual—grocery buying, matinee seeing, 12th night celebrating… returning presents to the store and co-eds to their campuses.  At 2:00 p.m., windshield wipers were hardly needed.  At 4:00, a bishop leading an Epiphany service in New Jersey encouraged folks to hurry home and not stay for the reception, fearing they would get stranded.  By 6:00 p.m. the streets were inches deep in fine powder and traffic had all but disappeared.

In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago.

The predicted winds never blew through, so flakes fell straight and steady for hours.  In house after house, friends who had come for dinner tried to move their cars after dessert, but they could no longer tell where the curb ended and the street began.  So a great many slid home on snowy sidewalks or camped out in basements and guest rooms for days.  We had 8 extra people in our apartment for a week.

From Washington to Boston the world took an unexpected holiday.  New York City was transformed.  There were skiers on 5th Avenue and children up way past their bedtime.  Shopkeepers couldn’t open the next morning, so neighbors downstairs traded milk for eggs and matches for toilet paper.  Cars were buried or useless, so everyone walked.  Planes were grounded until midweek and passengers snoozed under tiny blankets, when they weren’t eating pretzels for breakfast.  More than anything else, we noticed the silence.  The great buzzing metropolis folded its wings for a moment and rested.

We worked puzzle after puzzle, sometimes two in a single day, played board games and card games and snow games in the yard.  The only sounds you could hear were voices and church bells, and we listened more and better than we ordinarily did.  There was space in our conversations for ideas to develop, or questions to ponder, or challenges to be navigated.  My siblings, in town for a family event, found a way to work through some old hurts.  The federal government, which had been shut down in the preceding weeks, with insults lobbied in both directions across the aisle, experienced the forced quiet as a gift, too.  Maybe there was more we shared than we usually noticed?  Maybe the impossible was possible?

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him
Nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away
When He comes to reign:
In the bleak mid-winter
A stable-place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty,
Jesus Christ.

I’ve been thinking about that time out of time lately, because of the disagreements swirling around our ears this winter, this time not only across the aisle or the breakfast table, but across the country and the world.  Maybe we could use a Christmas snowstorm to lock us down for a few days, so that we can discover again that we have more in common than we think… a week of snow football to remind us that winning and losing is fine for games, but not for citizens or leaders or nations… an evening or two quiet enough to let us hear the angels sing in people that we normally discount or discredit or dismiss.  God is always being born in unlikely places.

What the world most needs is a place to meet, perhaps a snowy field between trenches, where we’ve left our weapons behind… or a table where all are welcomed and fed… or a manger with a baby who will turn our dirty straw into gold… or a conversation that gives everyone space and the benefit of the doubt.

What can I give Him,
Poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd
I would bring a lamb,
If I were a wise man
I would do my part,
Yet what I can I give Him,
Give my heart.

However dark the night may sometimes seem, this and every Christmas there is light and space and time enough for the impossible to come true.

Love, David