First snowfall

When I went out to walk the dog, I discovered that overnight we had received the first snowfall of the season. A nice way to start the new year.

So now I have to do my annual "snow quotation" from Angels in America: "Soon, this . . . ruination will be blanketed white. You can smell it—can you smell it? . . . Softness, compliance, forgiveness, grace."

We received just a dusting of forgiveness and grace, but still it's something.

I'm not sure why I find snowfall a spiritual experience. It's like, you look out your window, or you open your front door, and surprise! Manna from heaven! I remember once as a teenager in Utah, trudging to a ward youth gathering through thick falling snow in the dark. I came out of an alley shortcut, and there was this orange streetlight and the snow falling like ashes inside the parabola of illumination. I stood under the streetlight and looked up into the snowfall, which seemed to be radiating out from a point directly in front of me, and just had this quasi-rapturous experience.

Awesome. My love of life and my hope for the world have received a little shot in the arm today.