This Dark Night, This Short Day

It snowed last night, one of those nice, fluffy, cover-the-boughs-with-cotton kind of snows.  That means that the sounds of this morning are muffled, the cars not so noisy, even the snowplows' scraping muted.

And it's dark, the hunker down dark of the solstice time.

Now I get muffled, too, and I hunker down.  And I wonder.  And I sit.

I wonder about those tags on the trees in the drugstore, the ones that have some kid's wish on it.  "Boy, 13, camera."  "Girl, 8, Barbie."  I wonder about the tags that will still be on that tree on December 26.  I wonder about the kids on the other end of those tags, what circumstances have led them to be the ones who have tags on the tree at the drugstore.  And I sit.

I wonder at the cold and at the ingenuity some have found to keep themselves warm in it, despite the lack of a home address.  I wonder about their feet and hands and faces.  I wonder about those who are spending their first winter on the streets, how steep the learning curve must be just to make it to April.  And I sit.

I wonder at all of the ways I continually think and act less than skillfully, and how little my life matches what I know to be more skillful.  I wonder how to tell everyone I've ever offended just how much I would rather not have hurt them.  And I sit.

And yet I wonder at the resiliency of our spirit.  I wonder at the acts of kindness large and small that make this life joyous.  I wonder at the miraculous activity of being refreshed by a cool drink of water, of opening my eyes in the morning and seeing the clock.  I wonder at wondering.  And I sit.

I sit because I can't contain it all.  I sit because what I think "it all" is isn't even all of it.  I sit because I don't know what to do, will never know what to do, and yet have to move about all the same.