The Same Amount of Snow

"If you take no joy in the snow,
you will have less
joy in your life
and still the same amount of snow."
- Author Unknown

There is snow on the ground in Manitoba and many people are wringing their hands at its early arrival.  Somehow the protracted warmth of this autumn had many of us lulled into believing it might just go on forever.  We fell into a temporary forgetting that nature has her seasons and that the inevitable change is unconcerned with our little wills and desires.   

So why the talk of weather?  Because our freedom lies in our ability to respond to that which we have no control over, that which rises from our essential forgetting.   How to respond when yards have not been prepared before the snow falls, when careers and relationships don’t thrive as planned, when loved ones die before we are ready to say goodbye?

The disappointment and grief that we might experience at the sudden passage of autumnal bliss is a perfect opportunity to practice working with our emotional response to endings.  To strengthen our spiritual “muscles” when the stakes are not so high. To remember that the ‘dreaded white stuff’ is actually the coalescence of billions of individual flakes coming together in a way that humanity could learn from.  Mother earth reflects great wisdom back to us, if only we are willing to listen.  

Carole