Frozen in Time

Yesterday morning the temperature here had dropped to 21 degrees Fahrenheit, a low not seen on that day since 1978. My tender carnations were covered in a thin coat of ice, looking frozen in time. At 5:30 in the morning, in the predawn darkness, there was an eery silence and my steps crunched in the grass. Yet, as the morning progressed,and the sun came out in the early afternoon, the cold silence had a strangely soothing quality to it. A quality of silence I was familiar with from frosty mornings since I was a child. I have always been fascinated by these silences that accompany frosty winter mornings. Perhaps because they create the illusion that time is standing still, at least for a while. The comforting part for me comes in the break from motion, from the 24/7 machine of modern madness that never sleeps in its myriad forms from cell phones to highway noise, to overhead airplanes and kitchen televisions, computers, coffee machines, war machines, factory machines, and nature right along with all the motion and noise from wind, water, birds, frogs, or cicada, owls, depending on where you live. When a good frost hits, things seem to stop. And somehow that feels like a relief. We can comprehend stillness, whether in rapture or agony, it is motion and all its consequences that has us unnerved, so we don't even try to make sense of it any more, we just keep going , all the time, because we are afraid if we stop, we will lose our mind in the bottomless lake of peace, quiet, an experience modern man is desperate to avoid. With our souls surrendered to the thrill of the moment, whether it be the latest gadget, fashion, trend, idea, attitude, relationship, we are terribly afraid of silence and the deep answers it can bring in all its unpleasant demands. Frosty mornings feel outdated in that context. Maybe if we could add a sound effect, a light show, the silence would not be so obliterating to our beings that scream for silence, only to be ignored by our blunted, deafened appetite for more noise, more stimulation, bringing us one step closer to becoming the ultimate machine ourselves, right along side the machines we worship.