Snow

Snow is complex. Not chemically: a couple of hydrogen and an oxygen come together below 32°F (0°C) in the atmosphere, eventually becoming too heavy to stay afloat and drift, tumble, flurry down to an oddly expectant planet.

Snow is complex because there is such dichotomy in its existence. Perhaps this rings true for many things that I am simply overlooking, but I can think of few comparable examples that can bring such simultaneous elation and chagrin.

Sunday night, along with a large number of my college-attending peers, I was overjoyed to learn the school administration had bowed to the weather's whim and given us a snow day. The sentiment carried over to Monday morning, when most woke up at a later than average hour due to the nonexistence of academic obligations.

Yet, once pelted with a snowball, or after taking an unexpected dive on an inopportune sled ride, the love for snow died quickly. Complaints of the cold, and the wet, and the driving difficulty all began to drown out the adoring comments we had for the precipitation just a few hours earlier. Those comments returned Monday night, and Tuesday as well when we received two additional snow days.

Similarly, snow has great connotations for both death and birth, innocence and degradation. Christ is said to have washed us whiter than snow--so it is a standard of cleanliness and purity. But, at the same time, snow brings desolation. There are few things as harsh and violent as cold, and as subtly destructive as ice. For many, snow spells death. Any vegetation or unsheltered wildlife is certainly doomed at the arrival of snow.

The only things that can survive snow are those that can fight it. Humans combat it with our central heating and snowplows, but we welcome it with adulation. Snow is, like almost everything else in creation, complex. Love to life to death to doughnuts have a pro and con comparison, a good and bad connotation, especially humans. The beauty of it all, and at least one purpose of art, is sifting through the light and dark of it all.

Of Happy Rebellion

Just got introduced, via Dinosaur Comics, to the webcomic Rock, Paper, Cynic. While some of his strips are less appropriate, there are some that are quite funny:


I can't tell you how many times I've thought this, that just being content is close to the most revolutionary thing you can do, because everyone, everyone, everyone is going crazy in some small way or another. So if you could just be happy with a balloon on a cool fall day, you might just be more insurgent than Marilyn Manson, Thomas Jefferson and Ché all rolled together. Which would be a fearsome sight in and of itself.

Swimming Lessons

"The mathematician goes mad, not the poet, because the mathematician tries to build a bridge across the infinite when the poet can swim in the sea."
--Donald Miller

The poet can swim in the sea of the infinite...

Real, lasting, good poetry does this, deals with the infinite, is soaked full of it. Likewise is the poet: because his subject, his medium is contained in and deals primarily with things of infinite value, he is granted or learns or obtains the ability to dive headlong into the infinite and delve in and around, to wander and wallow and "swim" in it.

And not just the poet, but included in that title are artists of all forms.

Now, this is not to say that the mathematician is barred from participation in the infinite, but to do so he must abandon his attempts to circumvent or overcome the infinite.

Either that, or he must connect or incorporate the infinite into his activities. He must give up the bridge in favor of, say, a boat, or a bridge that runs just under the surface, something that finds the infinite in his own work, or sends his work into the infinite.

Or perhaps he could build a platform on which to rest after a swim in the infinite, for doing so is a wearisome task.

It Should Be

"Just because it is, doesn't mean it should be."
--from Australia

This statement, while somewhat trite and almost undoubtedly stated before in some much more articulate manner, struck me again tonight. Not in a huge way, as some poetic, spiritual, or meaningful statements normally do, but in a more subtle, reaffirmation sort of way.

The idea of the current state in contrast with the desired or "should be" state is something that radiates from the core of human existence. While we will very often come to different conclusions as to what the "should be" should be, every human can agree that things are not as they should be.

So often we look at the "is" and discount the "should" as unattainable, or not worth the time and effort it would take to attain. Either that, or we'll overlook what is and simply accept it, not even attempting to examine the justice of the status quo, content to tolerate the way things are without as much as a second guess.

As a believer, my entire existence is about looking at the "is," and realizing that it is not as it should be. This can range from the simple knowledge of the fact that this life, what is right now, is not as it should be, but what should be is just around the corner in glory. Or it can mean looking around me into the brokenness of the world and my own heart and using the life and love and grace God has given me to bring order and life and love and grace to it.