(Because the darkness in this world is real and wants to swallow goodness whole. Because the madness of it all could finish me...I go for walks, I meditate, I pray to steady and shore up my quivering human heart.)
When I awoke this morning in my otherwise empty bed, in my very full but otherwise empty room, my mind, also quite usually full, was for a brief moment at waking, quite empty.
And so there was much space in me, seemingly space to infinity and beyond...to see the brightness in my room and turn instantaneously to its source, the sight outside my window, my otherwise drafty window with the broken blind that is perpetually open.
Open to see that there was a world of sunshine gleaming on the snow.
Sunshine and possibility!
I drew back the veil of lacy patterned sheers my mother long ago made for me and to my sleep- filled eyes, the morning light was shockingly bright. A late February, early morning quality of light which sun and snow enhanced and were enhanced by.
The trees there, lightly flocked with a shimmering perfection of snowflakes, looked so beautiful that it cracked open the window of my previously shuttered heart, cracked it open to the wonder of this natural phenomenon of sunlight dancing, snow alive, on trees.
I felt so and suddenly energized by this great beauty and the generosity by which it existed, by which I existed, that I flitted like a moth from one window to the next to take in as much of the light and graceful softness that the smattering of overnight snow had lent the land around us.
And it seems I did so to somehow see if it was real. If I was real along with it.
Of course it and I were real, as I was awake and not still dreaming; real and I am sure to many persons, quite ordinary. But to me, in those moments of early discovery and apparently, still now, I wanted to proclaim the beauty of this bedazzlement of snow and sun to everyone!
I wanted to run and wake my young adult children, just home from travel.
Get up...look out your window. It is morning and we are somehow living in such impossible beauty! Look at the wildness! Let's go outside and take it in!
I wanted to stop the school bus driver and let all the sleepy little children off, and stall the transit buses, cars and SUV's whose exhaust was already choking up the morning air and call their drivers to park and come along with me.
I wanted to knock on all my neighbours doors and tell them to get their boots on and to grab their coats and put on their warm mittens.
I wanted to take everyone, young and old and reach my hands out to draw them all around me and proclaim that we must, we must all stop what we were doing just before now and set aside whatever we had planned, and acknowledge that the moment is now upon us...for friends, it is upon us...
...And walk up the little hill together while the light is pure perfection...while the snow is on the branches still and not a breath of wind around to blow it off. Come one, come all, come on!
Could this be real or am I just caught dreaming?
Imagine that we might all come together for love of earth and love of one another and see that there is wonder still within and all around us!
Imagine that we might move our cold, tired bodies up the hill in the morning chill and for a moment leave behind the awful news that wants to crush our spirits. Leave behind the endless push and churn of productivity, of productivity and growth that ruins earth and won't grant rest time and leaves so many on the margins. Let's leave behind the deafening roar and drag of words meant to divide life into us and them so that we might become conquered and/or become the conquerors. Let us be neither I beg you, let us leave it all behind just for a moment and walk along the snowy woodland trail in morning light together.
Imagine just for this snow bright winter morning that we might marvel at the way the ice forms little crystals on the evergreen branches here, at how the sun is so strong even when the thermometer tells that it is several degrees below zero C that we feel like we might unzip our jackets just a bit, or take our mittens off.
Then when we do we'd feel the sudden chill that shade trees provide to us, shade trees hunkered with snow laden branches in the dusky blue- grey shade of the trail through the hedgerow of evergreens. The evergreens still standing here before we reach the clear cut and then quickly we would head back out into the piercing sunshine of the snow bright landscape. Come on, come along and walk with me!
Imagine that we would go along and try to stay the challenge of the snowy course together, arms extended out in care, for balance on the boot trodden trail. A misstep now and we'd find ourselves knee deep in snow that wants to shiver down the back of our boots and we'd be thrown off our pathway.
We see that we must stay the course together and help each other up when we have fallen.
Entering the woods again imagine for an instant that we would laugh at how strangely beautiful the world can seem on a woodland trail on a late winter morning and how the sun is so bright with the reflection of the snow and how the chickadees are bopping all around us with their morning songs and how the first to break the trail here were the winter-white snowshoe hares whose population must be up based on their footprints.
Does this all matter? If so, then how or why?
Of course, it matters, silly me, everything that exists matters, same too with what we do or do not do!
Imagine chatting about how we all (and this earth) need lots more caring and how we each must learn how to love and care for our own broken hearts so we can see and care for the hearts of others. We'd ponder growing our compassion and what that care might exactly look like. And then imagine that we might fall back into the slow but generous step of silence, inspired by the great hush of snowy trees around us.
Imagine being awestruck at the reminders here that it is possible, still possible to find a moments' reprieve from the news of the day and to feel the upswing of sweet joy in such unexpected times and places.
Imagine wandering through the snaking trails that take us in the belly of the little woods, the little woods still nourished by its ecosystem of so much biodiversity and then out to the trail by the field the farmer owns so we could look beyond ourselves and catch a glimpse of frozen seascape over the tip tops of evergreens to the possibility of brighter tomorrows.
Imagine pausing here a moment so that we might feel lifted by a wing of gratefulness.
Grateful that somehow we are here in this instant, beholding such promise and such beauty in the midst of it all.
Then we may turn and trace our snowy footprints on the trails back out to where we started and, becoming very quiet once again, we might see that while otherwise the same, something now feels very different.
What is it that we feel? A twinge of hopefulness? The possibility of courage and of heart strength?
Imagine coming back down the hill on what otherwise seems ordinary pavement, an uninspiring roadway past humble houses yet somehow as we walk it now is sacred and the world around us filled with gloriousness.
Imagine that the brightly tangled world of limb and snow and chirping is within us, and it carries out beyond ourselves to where we can acknowledge all these gifts as part and brightest parcel of this whole darn world. This world which we know well and some better than others, also includes much hunger, need and hurt, pain and confusion.
Imagine that we could take all of this into our now unshuttered, wildly open, very human hearts and with courage to sustain us, raise our voices. Raise up our voices to help the world be kinder and be fairer.
Raise up our voices in unison and in a chorus of love.
Imagine that a walk together like this could help us see we aren't alone here on this often lonely journey.
That there is a shared humanity that we can to tap into to care deeply for all the world and so, stop othering.
Imagine that we can see that we are on this journey which is boldly, loudly asking us how to better love and share and care for those most vulnerable. Imagine that the answers are already, so generously waiting.
Imagine seeing that there already is goodness enough for everyone. Enough for everyone, should we only pause to look, and pause to listen as it calls our hearts back to each other, back to wisdom, back to kindness, back to earth, back to love and fairness, sharing.
As it calls us to be lit like sun on melting icicles, to gleam like snowflakes in the morning light, to glow and so to counter the darkness trying to claim this living world for its own.
We are being called to be the light this blessed world so needs.
Thank you for reading,
Wishing you wellness, peace, brightness and courage.
Love Jill xo
(Because the darkness in this world is real and wants to swallow goodness whole. Because the madness of it all could finish me...I go for walks, I meditate, I pray, I write to steady and shore up my quivering human heart.)
Jill M. MacCormack (she/her)
neurodivergent writer and mindfulness meditation practitioner
a kinder world begins with self-kindness :)
Jill, that was beautiful and so hopeful! The earth rewards us in spite of everything. Shows us the way to resilience and joy! And renews and replenishes itself and us. Love ma