sledding lessons

I’m looking for a way to make it through the band of grey cloud friends overstaying their visit week after week.

 I’m searching for the words to describe the horror we witness in real time on social media. Between flower arrangements and workouts and holiday photos.

I’m digging my way up from despair, clawing at ways to make a difference in an ever increasing world of chaos, calamity, and devastation. How to hold onto hope and faith.

What does it mean to keep your head up?

I worked with an artist once. We served breakfast all day to scores of little city dwellers. In New England, the winter cold stuns you and the sky is often an off white duvet of heaviness. Days and days and days of dark mornings and afternoons. She told me over slinging cups of coffee, on a morning much like today, that the clouds were only standing in front of the sun. It was back there, lighting up the sky. We just need to remember it’s there even when we can’t see it.

I think of that as I lift my head up.

I think of the way a life is strung together by a long thread of moments. Each one an opportunity to try again. A chance to see how we can serve the world in our own small and mighty way. Right where we are. In our corners of the world. I can witness any sliver of joy and turn it into fuel for an act of goodness. Small and mighty.

My kids taught me a thing about resilience on a cold, winter morning. A cold that stings. On this day the sun made an appearance and the entire sky was a radiant blue.  

On a sledding hill, behind the old post office, in the center of town, there stood a stump of snow and great potential. If you hit it just right, with the correct speed and precise direction, you could soar high and fast.

Over and over, they climbed back up that glassy hill, the sun swallowing them as they reached the top. Full of laughter and might, and determination. After each try, they would land in a heap of breathless giggles and then leap up with a flurry of overlapping ideas and plans for their next go. Each run down the hill was a chance to pay attention to what was working, and what wasn’t.

And then they did it. Landing the jump just right and flying effortlessly in the air.

And the celebratory hollers could be heard from above as they clumsily clamored back up to try again. I watched from the top, blue sky covering us all.

May we each take the grey days as an opportunity to practice hope and faith. To see each fall as a chance to go again, to find the right balance so we might soar. May we fly higher and higher, fearless, and free. And leave no one behind at the bottom of the hill.

Together we can find new ways to hit those bumps and catch those landings.

Whether the sun appears to shine or not.