Today's Sermon

WINTER GRACE

If you have seen the snow


under the lamppost


piled up like a white beaver hat on the picnic table


or somewhere slowly falling


into the brook


to be swallowed by water,


then you have seen beauty


and know it for its transience.


And if you have gone out in the snow


for only the pleasure


of walking barely protected


from the galaxies,


the flakes settling on your parka


like the dust from just-born stars,


the cold waking you


as if from long sleeping,


then you can understand


how, more often than not,


truth is found in silence,


how the natural world comes to you


if you go out to meet it,

its icy ditches filled with dead weeds,


its vacant birdhouses, and dens


full of the sleeping.


But this is the slowed-down season


held fast by darkness


and if no one comes to keep you company


then keep watch over your own solitude.


In that stillness, you will learn


with your whole body


the significance of cold


and the night,


which is otherwise always eluding you.

~ Patricia Fargnoli, 1937 -