There's another winter storm coming in.
It's messing up my plans. Moreover, its disrupting the schedule at the parish of which I am a part. A whole day of event planning has been cancelled.
The part of me that is experiencing the world as human is a bit disappointed that things aren't going to happen the way I wanted. That part of me is worried about cancelling things and anxious about the snow day. Will people still come? Damage control mode.
Meanwhile, my spiritual being is happily going with the flow. It is not concerned with this change in plans. It knows that all things work out for the benefit of all. Things on the physical plane happen. Ice and snow are part of the landscape of Northeast in January; its a natural part of life in this season. The little snow flakes do not know that our class had to be cancelled nor do they care. They are perfect in every way and there is no duplicate of any one of them anywhere.
At its best, religious life teaches acceptance of what is through the elevation of the spiritual self. It teaches us to worry not about snow days but to focus on snow flakes. To focus not on our imperfections as humans but our perfection in the Spirit.
Acceptance is not patiently waiting in anticipation for something wanted to arrive or conditions to change, but rather describes a state of being. Acceptance means to be perfectly alright, satisfied, in fact, with the state of things; knowing that there is an order and reason for all things occurring as they do. And that all things work together for good.
We human beings don't consistently understand this. Caught up in worldly assessments of right and wrong, black and white, good and bad; no condition escapes judgement. Snow day: Bad.
Unless you're under the age of 10, in which case, Snow Day: Good. Very good. "Let's build a snow man!" Children have snowball fights for hours and make snow angels and look up at the clear blue sky and feel ever so happy in that cold, wet, fluffy, white bed.
In this moment, the snowflakes are coming and they have already been. The snowflakes of last winter make up the water that came out of the faucet and filled my glass and caused my rice to swell. They fill the streams and lakes and are lifted invisibly upward to create billowy clouds. They sit in small balls on blades of grass as dew. They gather in large groups and fall heavy from the sky as chunks of ice. They are life which moves from one state of being into another. Life never ending only changing. Beautiful, bountiful, blissful snow flakes are we.
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