'Let’s take a lesson from snow...' Photo: William Pitcher / flickr CC.
Snow
Chris Rose writes about a transformation in winter
Winter never seems to have properly arrived until we get some snow, and the years when we have snowless winters seem lacking in some way.
Snow is a wonderful thing. Anyone who has been with a group of children when it first starts to snow will remember the excitement and the buzz of anticipation that goes around the room; faces pressed against the glass and the hope that it will settle, and they can soon be outside.
Snow transforms the most ugly of places and makes them beautiful. We take pictures of it to hang on our walls, children go sledging, build snowmen and throw their snowballs.
Snow, though, is made up of millions of tiny individual snowflakes: each one incredibly beautiful, complex and absolutely unique.
Catch one and it melts instantly on the hand, but see them collect together and those wonderfully delicate flakes can bring nations to a standstill, close the busiest motorways, empty high streets and halt the cruellest wars.
The snow-blanketed countryside is a beautiful and inspiring sight. Maybe, in a way, we are all like snowflakes, each of us unique, precious, complex.
Perhaps snow has a lesson to teach us. Individually we can make a start towards a better world, but together we can do so much more.
Let’s take a lesson from snow. Together, let’s see what love can do.
