Friday, December 14, 2007

Frozen Inspiration


By no means did they all survive. Freezing rain drenched the city earlier this week, followed by heavy snow. Many neighborhoods went dark as ice-tugged power lines went down, and heavy weighted branches and boughs succumbed to the extra load. But they were the exception. Not to minimize the frustration of those who lost power or to ignore the crack of breaking limbs, but far, far more stayed up than fell down. The city has been, to echo the song, a "Winter Wonderland" of ice-sleeved trees and wires and -- well -- everything. If bare branches and high wires posed the greatest threat, evergreen boughs felt the greatest weight, and their needly arms sagged beneath the strain.

But -- and here's the thing -- they didn't break. They certainly look worse for wear -- disheveled, in a way, and tired -- and who knows whether their resilience will again elevate and restore their more stately pose. But they are hanging on. Tall, strong, firmly rooted, and grand.

Hanging on. Maybe that's not the most exhilarating hope for long and heavy Advent days when life seems to drop on us everything it's held in storage; maybe that's not the brightest metaphor for holidays more accustomed to twinkles and sprinkles and mall speakers cheerily droning carols. But when the phone won't stop ringing and the hungry and homeless keep knocking and the nits around us keep picking and the bombs keep exploding and the rhetoric keeps intensifying -- when the rain turns to ice, and then it snows -- hanging on may be the best that we can do. Arms bending but not breaking, after all, can be powerfully heroic sometimes.


And we can use all the inspiration we can get.

No comments: