Here comes the... snow!

“In a cold night, iluminated by the glow of the stars, I was anxious in the dark waiting for the sunrise. The sands of the desert shone shone like silver sugar. The wind whispered me His name again and again: ‘Abba, Abba’. The vigil was ending and my life would never be the same. In a lonely cave in the desert of Zaragoza, I knew God as my Father. I was once again a child lost in wonder, love and praise.
Become a child again (as Jesus commanded that it should happen) is to recover a sense of surprise, wonder, and vast delight in all reality. Look at the face of a child on Christmas morning when she enters the room transformed by the passage of Santa Claus at midnight. Or when she discovers the coin under the pillow, see the first rainbow or smells of the first rose. Few of us hold the breath at times like these, as one day we did. The passage through the corridor of time made us feel superior while all the rest is smaller, less impressive.
We know our dedication and our disposal. We acquired certain domain of the nature and of the diseases. Through the miracle of the modern technology, we are able to experience sights, sound and events previously available just to Colombo, Vasco da Gama and others adventurers. There was a time in not too distant past when a storm made grown men tremble and feel small.
But God is being pushed out of His own world by science. The more man knows about weather, is less inclined to pray in a storm. Airplanes now fly up, down and around all types of storm. Satellites reduces the storms, once terrifying, in photographic events. What infamy (if a storm could be made infamy) be reduced from teophany to a nuisance!
Even the universe and the ‘outer space’ has gradually ceased to impress us. We talk about spacecrafts on Mars with the same excitement as if we were sending cameras to the East Village in New York. We are saturated, unable to feel awe and fear. This decrease in the ability to impress may be a sign of maturity, a necessary consequence and healthy progress. But I am inclined to think that this shows a loss of balance.”

Quoted from the book of Brennan Manning, ‘Convite à loucura’ (The importance of being foolish).


Forgive me this poor translation. I’ve tried to find this text in the internet on the original version, but I couldn’t.
Today is 19th of December, 2009: we had the first day with snow of this winter, here in Bergen… and the really first snow of my life. Since I woke up in this morning and looked outside, for the white roofs all around the neighborhood, a big smile came on my face; and it lasts until now, while I write this lines. The excitement to go outside and touch the snow, and the experience of the snowflakes touching my face, gave me a feeling of deep joy. It was that kind of moments when you just want to thank God and praise him, for such simple but beatiful scene. I could feel the presence of God in that moment, and I had just one thought in my mind: ‘God really exists, and He is wonderfull, and creative!’. I felt like a child again.
But later on, following my way, I noticed that no one else, except a child playing with the snow in the park, shares of this same joy and exitement as I was feeling. Immediately a question comes to my mind: ‘How they can’t be marvel with such beautiful thing?’. But in the same instant, a clear answer came to me: They lost their ability to marvel at this, as I lost mine to be excited with a colorful sunrise in the summer, or with the magnitude of the crack of a lightning through the sky on a stormy night.
It makes me remember this text of Brennan Manning. We are losing the ability to dazzle, to percept God through his creation and give him glory.
If it continues snowing for the next weeks, my natural tendency is to don’t feel more excitement. All the beauty I saw in the snow will give space for the complain: 'Oh, snow and more snow! When it will stops? I don't want to go out and get my feet wet, again...' And the excitement gone…

Thanks, God, for this precious moment I had! And help me to don’t get used with the things around me, but give me sensibility and open my eyes to percept your action even in the simple things!