Early Winter
The cold, the snow, and the price of wisdom
View
Like in many places across the country, it has snowed a lot this winter where I live. A week or so ago, about eight or nine inches of snow fell on our driveway. And it has been cold, very cold, single digit and even below zero temperatures at times. So the snow is still here as I sit inside and write these lines. Which is unusual here, although the same thing happened last year. This gives me more opportunity to shovel snow than I, at this stage of my life, desire. Lots of snow, lots of shovel time, lots of cold. And back inside as soon as possible. At an earlier stage of life, all of this felt different. Not surprising to read, or to write, but it is, somehow, surprising.
We grew up in Michigan. There were lots of days out in the snow, all day. Shoveling, of course, but also sledding, skiing, snowmobiling, snowballing, tunneling, and building. Like Ralphie’s little brother Randy in A Christmas Story, we would get bundled up in snow suits and hats and, if it was especially cold, soon to be snot-encrusted face masks. At our family cabin up in the northern Michigan woods, some years we even got to push the snow off the roof, then jump from the roof into the enormous drifts below. Other nights, back in the suburbs, we would find a good spot near the road, a shallow depression with lots of good snow and accessible routes of egress, and throw snowballs at cars just after they passed our spot. After the snowballs found their target, we would pause, waiting for brake lights to flash red. We couldn’t reliably assess the occupants of our target car before it was time to hurl our snowballs, so you may find a car full of young people ready to stop, chase us into the night and deliver some form of retribution. In such cases, rare, but memorable, we needed to get out quickly and find our pre-determined hiding places. We have lived to tell the tale. On school afternoons, when the road conditions were right, we could get off the school bus one stop early, sneak around to the back of the bus, grab hold of the bumper, get the knee bend just right, and let the bus pull you to your stop. An unexpected grate or other road imperfection would briefly intensify that excitement, then bring said excitement to an painful and perhaps humiliating end. And we would stay out all day, or it seems like it in my memory. 1970’s Michigan winter, it was its own unique place, and, it turns out, time. It was almost like we didn’t feel the cold. In college, I would walk sometimes 20 minutes to class, often across the frozen Red Cedar that cuts the Michigan State University campus down the middle. The cold was more of an annoyance, something you lived with, not for. I drove a 1970-something Dodge Omni and parking it in a big lot on campus, not driving it until I went home, and I didn’t go home often. One winter, all the door handles had frozen, either not moving or snapping off in my hand. So I had to climb in through the hatch. (It is funny to me that some want to return to the manufacturing prowess of 1980’s America).
Moving to the St. Louis area gave a small respite from the snow and the cold. It snows here, but not as much and it doesn’t stay as long. But long enough to sled down the nearest hill, or even our back yard hill with our children, more than 25 years ago. We weren’t out as long then, long enough to enjoy the snow and our children alongside the memory of our own childhood. Their childhood, we believed, being protected from the recklessness of ours. Another time to treasure. And now, we can enjoy it with our grandchildren, at this point more for their sake than ours. I could just as easily enjoy them inside. Before I didn’t feel the cold. I feel it now, and it isn’t because it is colder. It is tempting to say that the world is different in all sorts of ways from an earlier time. The unstated implication being that I remain the same. Of course the world, and me, are different, the world is always different, and always the same - or at least more continuous with the older version than we might like to imagine.
We think of ourselves as being a certain age. I’m not sure what age that is, and it moves upward as we age, but younger. Nobody thinks of themselves as older than they are, at least nobody past forty or so. I don’t really know how to imagine myself as older than I am, I can’t see that part of me from here, though I observe older people all around me. Even as other people likely see more of that in me already than I want to see. Age is just a number, but it seems to be more than that when you have to get out of bed after shoveling your driveway. I am not my imagined age.
We can think of our lives as a series of milestones. A number of things to advance through, different for every person. High School, college for some, marriage for some, children, grandchildren. But also this job or this position or that experience or achievement. Along the way, as we pass or give up on passing these milestones, our focus should shift. Maturity might be described as this shifting of focus. Richard Rohr, in his book Falling Upward, speaks about life in two halves. In the first half of life, we are more ego driven, we are establishing ourselves as adults, accomplishing, moving forward, attaining. Rohr speaks of the first half of life as building the container - identity, self-image, career. The second half of life, should we choose to enter it, and some don’t, is about filling that container with what is important, transcendent, meaningful. It is about moving toward a purpose that is more than building the container. Some people spend their whole lives building their container, especially if it is an impressive one. Impressive, but not quite as satisfying as expected or hoped. Usually, probably always, we recognize some inflection point that shifts us from the first half to the second half, if we make that shift. And those inflection points are very, very likely to be painful. Disappointments, failures, betrayals - life normally gets around to punching you in the mouth if you live long enough. The trick is to recognize it, remember it, feel it, grieve it, and, by God’s grace use it to reassess what you are up to for the rest of your life. There can be a move toward increasing dependence and wisdom, humility and insight, failure and meaning, weakness and community. Or not. Life will punch you in the mouth anyway, it is no good trying to deny it or move through it. The reformation era French protestants, the Huguenots, deeply persecuted, said “La vie est dure, mais Dieu est bon” - life is hard, but God is good. Jesus said,
In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.
John 16:33
I am now old enough, and more to the point, have been punched in the mouth enough, to see the blessings God has given me more clearly. I not only have a wonderful family, I have the joy of memories of that family growing in age and size over the years and decades. We have been connected to the big story God has placed us in through relationships, through being drawn in to what He is doing in this community and throughout the world, and through the blessings and comfort that can only come after being punched in the mouth. One has to recognize that has happened, though, to feel the disappointment and disorientation of the punch, and to allow comfort and wisdom to come through it. Without these disappointments, though, I may still be just building my container. So, they are blessings, very much in disguise, if I allow them to be.
There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens …
Ecclesiastes 3:1
Age is not life punching you in the mouth, it is just life. Unfortunately, wisdom doesn’t automatically come with age. I think we have all probably been surprised by this fact, in ourselves and in others. But some age is almost surely required for certain types of wisdom. So, this too is a blessing. To look back on all that He has brought me, and us, through requires enough years to look back on. And while I am glad to look back on snowballs and bus bumpers, I don’t want to be pulled behind one now. And so age can be, and should be, a blessing. It may not feel like a blessing that it takes longer to get out of bed after shoveling the driveway, but getting there can illuminate the forgotten blessings of earlier days and remind us of the milestones we may have barely noticed on the way through.
I don’t want to live forever, at least not in this form, and I don’t really want to be younger. But I am grateful to be here, in this part of the story, with all the people who I love and who have loved me, where I can see where I have been and where I can still shovel the driveway. It is the season for it, apparently.
Links
Falling Upward - A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life - Richard Rohr - Jossey-Bass Publishing - 2011
