Snow and ICE

Dear beloved reader,

Typically, the audio at the top of my posts is a recording of the text, but I’m trying something new. This audio is an 11-minute guided meditation, inviting you into practice with me. My intention is for this to be an offering of connection and love, and to complement the writing below. I hope you enjoy.

With love,

Emma

---

There’s a snow storm today. Like the ones we used to have when I was a kid. When a foot of snow was a normal sign that winter was here. The joy in my heart goes deeper than the excitement of watching the white flakes fall and make the whole city quiet. It is deeper than a return to the joy of childhood when the day became special for no reason other than that’s what mother nature deemed—when school shut down and the mandate was: play, then rest.

No, this joy feels more like coming back to life after a long period of dormancy. The season is here, as it should be, cycling through its regular rhythms. I know intellectually that this means nothing about the inevitable progression of climate change and the unfamiliar heat that will soon bake us again in the warm months. But my body doesn’t know that. My body knows that this is home, this is natural and good. I check in with the neighbors I know, move my car to the instructed location, and then settle in with my tea and my frosted windows, watching them slowly get painted with the creep of intricate ice-stars.

And yet as I am curled up with my thick socks, layers of blankets and a warm cup, I feel the urge to cross my arms over my chest and hunch my back over my heart. Tightness starts just to the left of my sternum, mimicking the alarm bells of chest pain and heart attack in a desperate attempt to keep itself safe from some lurking, subtle threat. I know these symptoms well and so no longer call for help or get caught in spirals of thought that something is physically wrong. No, instead I recognize that my dear, beloved body is telling me that something is wrong, terribly wrong, in a different place.

Social cohesion is safety. When that cohesion is under threat, the body begins fighting for its life. Right now, the threat is real, it is here, and it feels like it’s only getting closer. The reality has been sinking in for years now that the precarious illusion of security that my government used to provide to me is crumbling. But when I got a text message from my friend last night as I was driving home in the dark to try to beat the snow, something cracked. She said she’d spent the day crying and a chill ran across my skin. As she told me about the latest person murdered by my government while trying to protect their neighbors, the screams burst forth from my throat and tears began to well in my eyes until I shouted, I can’t cry right now I’m on the highway! and we sat mostly in silence together until I got home safely.

This morning before the snow began falling I sat in meditation for much longer than I usually do. My mind was full of thoughts. Finding my way to a quieter, stiller place takes real effort and persistent patience these days, but with the gift of time, I was able to settle and receive short, fleeing moments of the only true comfort I’ve ever known—surrender to the Divine, to the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, to the nature of all sentient beings. All desire and clinging fades, love ceases to be something to be conjured, and awe equalizes all previously held preferences. My body becomes the earth again and presence arrives like a boundless embrace. Small, fleeting moments.

By the end, nothing had changed. The tightness in my chest and the deep joy in my gut remained. My body holds ancient wisdom that I no longer question. It knows that the threat is real. It knows that my neighbors aren’t safe, that the trust I’ve been so used to for my whole life is fraying, and that one day I may not be safe either. No amount of dharma will change that, because the dharma is about coming into closer alignment with reality, and right now, this is reality. I do not meditate to be soothed. If I did I would have given up a long time ago. But I do meditate in order to remember the ground of life, the truth of mind, and to remind myself to trust in that which is beyond me and of which I am a part. Without that, I’d be useless to myself, my friends and family, to my neighbors, and to you.

My joy as I watch the white sky become the white trees and then the white ground is real, and my body knows it. My terror and grief and rage as I open my eyes to the suffering of those around me and to the loss of precious safety is real, and my body knows it. I pray that you may listen to your body when it is telling you truths, that you may learn how to love it and care for it as you walk through the reality of this world, and I pray that we may all learn to trust the wisdom of our bodies enough to use them skillfully for the benefit of all.