Minister’s Column:

As I compose these words it is a grim, gray day with the wind chill factor in the minuses, and still no gracious comforting blanket of snow to cover the tangled stalks and flattened leaves in the garden. No snow to protect and warn all those green shoots that thought that spring was just around the corner. Our oil tank picked this moment to fail and I really wasn’t ready to shlep 1200 pounds of concrete into a frame for a new platform, but what was the choice? Julie’s car is whining and the heater in mine is on the fritz. It must be February!

February is, according to my dictionary, the ancient Roman month of expiation, of making amends, of penance. I wasn’t aware that I or any of us had committed enough sins to deserve this season. February was the final month of the Roman year, and ended with a great feast. We’re going to punctuate ours with the traditional Valentine’s Shuffle. For the Native Americans the February full moon was “the Hunger Moon.” The homeless know that all too well – don’t forget our food bank boxes! Kirster Stendahl, Lutheran Bishop of Stockholm, speaks of the need for snow to reflect the meager light of this “gloomy and depressing” month. February is the dark month, the month when depression haunts so many people, the month of tedious waiting for the tantalizing hopes of March, the Vernal Equinox and Spring.

Europe is being slammed by this winter, and the Midwest is buried in ice and snow. Even Phoenix has gotten close to freezing and California’s groves are coated in ice. But we, the poet Donald Hall says, have not paid our dues to winter without the trials of snow and sleet, “bad backs from shoveling…, rasp of frozen air in the lungs, falls on ice, chunks of snow down our boots.” “It’s a psychic disaster” in New England not to have wrestled with the demon of winter says Hall.

Thoreau took a milder view, spending winter at Walden, bundled up with lots to read and think about, trying to stay warm. But Thoreau knew well that to shut the world away had to be balanced with long walks, especially at sunset with the luminous glory of crystal haloes around the deepening color. Last night the moon was a silvery sliver, cupped low in the sky, in a cluster of cumulous clouds. It was radiant as winter sparrows were darting noisily through the brilliant holly bushes. Bundle up and brave the cold and dark, for life at this season too is bathed in glory. Join us at church, even if you’ve been away a long time. The welcome will be as warm as the hard working radiators, the fellowship as hearty, and the laughter of children as joyful as ever. Blessings!

Dave Johnson