Winter Luck
spiritual musings in uncertain times-- compelling stuff!
Every morning we watch the birds fight over their favorite perch on the bird feeder outside the kitchen window. Mostly sparrows, cardinals, and the occasional plucky Carolina chickadee.
Winter in the city is oppressive.
Particularly this week as Nashville struggles to recover from Winter Storm Fern. “Every year it feels like these storms get stronger,” my husband says one morning as we drink our coffee and watch the birds peck at seeds in the snow.
Are they? Probably. We’ve only ten Tennessee winters under our belt, and the last two have include catastrophic power outages.
“And next month starts tornado season!” I remind him cheerfully.
We’re like cartoons of worried, old curmudgeons in our robes shaking our heads over the state of the world.
A few weeks ago, before the schools shut down indefinitely due to bad weather, we took ourselves on a hike north of the city. It was cold for Nashville, 24 degrees with the sun out, but we embraced it. Sucking in icy air, we made our way up the steep incline, stopping every once in a while to listen to water dripping through the frozen creek in the valley below.
The truth is, I owe much of who I am today to the sturdy winter woods of Tennessee. Maybe someday I’ll find the words to talk about finding myself— whatever that means— at a folk craft day retreat, hosted at a small family farm tucked deep in the armpit of a ravine near Sequatchie Cave.
But that’s a story for another time.
200,000 homes lost power in the coldest week of the winter so far, including my family’s home. We were fortunate enough to book into a hotel, and slept each night cramped, but warm, in a pile of limbs and snoring toddlers. As we drifted off, our phones would ping endlessly alerting us to warming shelters nearby.
I’ve always felt uncomfortable by the term “blessed”, the spiritual cousin to the word “luck.” I didn’t feel blessed as I snuggled my kids warm through the night, but I felt grateful. Blessed makes it sound like I did something to merit favor with a higher power that has allowed me to escape suffering.
