It began with a suggestion of whiteness swirling my neighbor’s roof, then changed its mind with oblong patches hobnobbing its corners. More began sticking on gutters and downspouts. Then it felt like the Great Baker-in-the-Sky was sifting fine flakes of flour that whitened the outdoors: Snow-flowers filled out fan-shaped remains on the branches of my viburnum bushes, snow-trills scalloped the red berries of my six-foot Christmas holly, snowdrifts blanketed the bleached winter grass, and snow-sergeants peaked the tops of my plank fence. 

Within snow’s eiderdown streamed Presence, silence, protection, and a pregnant pause to stop, to pay attention: a show was underway and no one knew its duration.

Such displays, unexpected and stunning, exteriorize the trickling effect of grace in moment-to-moment living.  Even this morning’s gift from my hospice nurse—a snowball!