Today. The wind has died down from the winter blast of last night. The sun is trying to come out, making long indistinct shadows on the green, frozen lawn. Iowa transitioned with a jolt yesterday from a pleasant fifty-degree fall to a zero-degree, barren, broken, inhospitable winter. Inside my warm little house, I stay away from the windows and their radiant cold. I listen to the tinkling of a Christmas CD. I wonder if I can both believe and not believe in the Christ Child, and the normal joy this season once brought me. The softness and cheer of the normal winter is a thing of the past.
The planet becomes more and more inhospitable every year, with larger and larger swings of temperature. That which we took for granted...air, water, sun, warmth, seasons, rain, snow...have become our challenge for this life. The Arctic ice melts and the polar bears die. More and more species die each day. We are in the midst of a huge extermination of our own making. We have lived in denial...I have lived in denial. I still drive my Chevy 250 truck to the barn instead of walking. I have never used the bus system in Cedar Rapids. I don't even know how. I love to drive. Yesterday I just drove around for no reason for an hour. I wanted to be with people, even if it was a crowd of cars. The traffic yesterday was horrindous. Everyone else is driving, too, looking for Christmas gifts. In the United States, Christmas is the season of giving. In Japan, it is the season of shopping. We taught them that. We just forgot to teach them about the giving part. I wonder what else we forgot to teach the world when we set our example of consume, consume, consume. Now our economy is split between retail sales and health care. Our consumerism is making us sick, our planet sick, and my Fundamentalist mother believes the end is near. I hope she is wrong.
Yep, hell freezes over. Minus 18?!? I'll not be visiting the ashram this winter! cvb
Posted by: Carol | December 15, 2008 at 07:50 PM
It was minus 18 degrees here this ayem, with 6 inches of fresh snow. Stay warm.
Posted by: Chris | December 15, 2008 at 02:05 PM