In your wintering, peace.
What paddling along a frozen shore taught me about the sacred in all things.
When my husband asked me out paddling I thought he lost his mind. We were at a friend’s cabin up in the Minnesota woods just to close it up for winter. It had frozen over night and the temperatures had dropped far below my comfort zone (which they often do in MN!)
But his face was lit like he had seen a light from beyond. So I took a deep breath and wrapped myself in several layers of clothing and followed him down to the dock. Overcome by the silence of the water shimmering in the morning dusk and the steam rising above the waters we silently sank into the canoe like we would enter an old church.
Quietly we took off. Quietly we watched. Quietly we dipped our paddles into the water.
Doesn’t transcendence break-in in unexpected places? Usually we look for sacred experience at all sorts of places. We look for it. We search for it. But when we find it, we find it by surprise. Like the unexpected smile of a stranger or the frozen shore of a small MN lake. It is not even that we find it. It finds us.
And so we paddled. Overcome by the moment. Still silent. I probably had my mouth wide open. I did not care that my fingers started to freeze and my toes got cold.
I just looked. At the beauty the freezing night had created. At the million icicles quietly greeting us from the shore. And as it would not be enough, at the sun humbly rising behind the trees.
Quietly. Watching. Alone with each other. Embraced by mother nature.
The scenery enclosing us like a magic monastery. A cathedral of a billion water drops frozen in time. How could one not be speechless?
A story of my favorite author came to my mind. The Danish thinker Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) once told a tale of a man rowing out on a lake in the quiet of dusk. The shallow lake lay silent beyond the circles where the oars broke the surface of the water, trickling little droplets of murky water back into the boat. It was then that an oar hit a dark object on the shallow floor of the lake. When the man lifted it out of the water he found himself looking at a little treasure chest. He brushed the water and mud off and tried for some time to open it. When the lid finally gave way he found the key inside.
On that wintery morning along that freezing shore we felt like that man. As we found the chest. And the key inside.
The monks tell us that the most important spiritual practice is to find the sacred in all things. Sometimes we are overcome by the sheer beauty of nature. Sometimes we need to look deeper. Often we just need to be open. Even reluctantly. Until it finds us. And turns us inside.
So may this wintering season find you
with grace.
And surprise you
with unexpected gifts
of beauty
and silence
and joy.
And in your wintering, peace.
AF
Thank you for reading and enjoying these photo memories with me. I am new here. Let me know if I should stay around and follow :-) Thank you.
