Weather is Where You Are

One morning last week while I was exercising in the basement of the Mission Home, snow was falling in the backyard. I watched it through the screened basement window. It has been a season of snow. A record-breaking season. As of Wednesday, Philadelphia had 70.3 inches. The previous record for the snowiest winter in Philadelphia was 65.5 inches in 1995-96.

Schools were cancelled. Businesses were closed. Lives were disrupted. The weather impacted everything. By mid-morning the power was out, not to return until early evening the next day. The house was cold. The candles were insufficient. The food in the fridge was warm. Roads were not plowed. Grocery store shelves were ghostly empty.

But this world of mine was wonderfully quiet. The snow dampened excess noise – from cars, planes and people.

And a familiar thought came to mind: Weather is where you are.

Unconsciously my entire world was buried in snow. It extended in all directions and dimensions. I wondered how my 82-year-old father would weather this storm? And my new two-week-old grandson?

I put on long-johns, gloves, stocking cap and my heavy winter coat. I spoke kindly to my all-wheel-drive rig, like a rider might speak to his horse at the beginning of a steeple chase. We drove up north and the roads were empty of other horseless carriages. Trees had fallen down, taking power lines with them.

I stopped and took some pictures.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

And soon pick-up trucks with snowplows were everywhere, reminding me of hyenas arriving after the kill, excited for the spoils.

Back at the darkened Mission Home, my laptop was using its battery reservoir. And with my wireless USB I was connected to the rest of the snowbound universe.

No man is an island, entire of itself
every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.

Unless, of course, no man is a snowman. My world was blanketed in snow, lots of snow. That was, until I opened an email from a friend in Seattle. He’d been on my farm that day and had sent a bunch of new photos. Eager to see the beauty of the blizzard in another part of the country, I quickly opened one photo after another.

I was stunned to see not white, but green. Green fields, green lawns, green trees. The contrast was arresting. Like awakening from an unfinished dream, I realized once again that weather is where you are. It impacts everything and colors your entire reality.

A different kind of weather is even more impactful and disruptive: storms in our hearts and minds. Unhealthy emotional responses to the challenges of daily life can create internal storms of monster proportion.  Such storms blur our vision and corrupt our internal compasses.  But perception is reality.  And with storms of the heart and mind, perception provides protection.  We quickly lose direction and cause significant damage to ourselves and others. We create our own power outages. We crash into others. We overheat, working feverishly to place blame externally. We create excuses and tell lies – all as a means of escaping personal responsibility for our thoughts, actions and choices.

But unlike the snow falling from a heavenly cloud, these storms are of our own creation.  We are our own weathermen.  And while the sun will eventually melt the snow, a frozen heart can last forever unless we choose to turn on the defrost.

At such times, I find these three sentences to be most helpful:

I was wrong.
Please forgive me.
I love you.

Indeed, weather is where you are! Whether it is snow falling in Philadelphia or discord blowing through one’s heart, everything is impacted.