During the last hours of a winter storm, the snow slows and falls more delicately. The wind has subsided and the evening has arrived, and at this late hour I began my daily meditation. After going through my usual litany of meditation focuses and intentions, I opened my eyes and watched the snow fall, choosing to make the pretty scene part of the practice. In the same way I once sat outside in the summer and did my daily meditation by the pool, listening to the birds and the insects and gentle rustling of the leaves in a warm breeze, I made the winter snow part of this meditation.
It is a decidedly different feeling when meditating on a winter evening. That one world could look and feel so completely changed in just a few months is a remarkable wonder, yet as far away as summer felt, and as distant and dim were the echoes of its memories, the warm heart of it all still beat beneath the ice and snow. It was there in the candlelight, there in the hints of blue that the sky insisted on bleeding into the night.
