Suzie introduced me to the music of the Danish String Quartet, and every winter around this time I turn to their songs to quell the wildness of the outside world and the wilderness of the heart. This past week of madness and morification, coupled with the coldest temperatures we’ve had thus far this winter, has necessitated some peace and calm and comfort. My daily meditations have provided such a haven, as has an intentional effort to remain unruffled and unbothered by all the news that tried to creep into our daily existence.
I didn’t always succeed, and there were moments when I reared into righteous and defiant anger, but I did my best to strike a balance. These are things we learn to navigate throughout our entire lives. Hopefully I haven’t neared the end of it yet. And somewhere within this interminable winter there is a flower – perhaps it is only the seed, or the desiccated, hollow stem, or the deep, frozen root – but it is there, waiting for the return of spring.
I listen to this music and it allays some sorrow, easing some sadness.
“The world may of all things bereave me,
Its thorns may assail and aggrieve me,
The foe may great anguish engender:
My rose I will never surrender.” ~ Now Found Is The Fairest Of Roses
Outside, a blanket of white snow has kept the ground secure. Snow acts somewhat strangely as the garden’s best insulator, and surprise savior, so long as it lasts. When it falls, it casts a different spell – something mesmerizing, something meditative, something that stills time. Watching from the cozy confines of a conversation couch, I pause in my reading and survey our front yard. I remember when the twins excitedly romped through the green grass of late summer, when the first blooms of the Chinese dogwood opened their delicate sepals, when the Japanese painted fern nodded its impossibly-gorgeous fronds in a warm breeze…
The panoply of life plays out, each day like a snowflake – unique, one-of-a-kind, precious and as rare as it is common and mundane – and all the days so heartbreakingly beautiful, even the worst ones – because to have a bad day means you still understand what it is to feel things. Most of the tears we shed are out of love – love that wasn’t returned, love that was lost, love that was misguided into hurt, love that those who departed seemed to take with them – but almost always it was love propelling our sorrow. What comfort and what splendor resides in such a realization.
I don’t allow myself to feel that as much as I should.
All we can do is keep trying.
