Good Winter-Bon Iver

Proverbs 25:13

As the cold of snow in the time of harvest, so is a faithful messenger to him that sent him, for he refresheth his soul.

When I moved, I lost the my CD Bon Iver's "For Emma, Long Ago." For the uninitiated, this album is already a classic. Bon Iver is an Ebonics-like transliteration and pronunciation of the French term for "Good Winter." There is a huge back-story on this work that you can Google. No need to restate what is already out there. I want to mush the sled dogs of my thoughts into new snow.

Being that this is the first winter in seven that I am not heading out to California, I am truly hoping for a "Good Winter." This somehow sounds like a mash-up between Charlie Brown's "Good Grief" and Narnia's "Always winter, never Christmas" negation. Being Nordic, I love the winter. But, I only love it if I can get warm. Pure cold is not cool without some heat.  

I debated buying another CD of the work to replace the lost copy. Although I disposed of 90% of my books and a good deal of CD's and entirely tossed VCR movies in the move, I somehow lost track of the tracks in the blizzard of the transport. I have several Amazon gift cards, I reasoned, might as well buy another CD. MP3's are all too flurry-like, gone in the technology of seasonal change. It want something that ain't going to melt with the wrong push of a button.

Until an insight at 4:30 this morning fell: Maybe the CD is yet unopened and still in its wrapper? That was a key insight. All that glitters might be gold...in the snow.

For, up until the move, I had been primarily listening to the album on Spotify for free until my conscience kicked in and said that I should just buy the work rather than poach. Give the artist his/their due. So I did. But, I had not yet opened the musical gift. So, this morning, I found its shiny self in the stacks. Wow, this is like me finding my damn glasses in St. Louis after two months when the Spring thaw came when I was four in 1967. Here was the impossible reality on that issue: Although my eyesight was really poor in my left eye when I was four, it had nothing to do with the eye. The problem was neurological, something the glasses couldn't rectify!

I spent all winter longing to find glasses that my parents were ticked I had lost that did nothing to help my vision. But, I was too young to articulate such realities. So I suffered, looking for glasses in the snow, that did nothing, absolutely nothing, to help my vision. Talk about existential angst. Now at 50, I have to wear glasses like grandma to read. Kind of scary really. A thin plane of arc-glass determining where I can read or not. Another existential crisis.

"For Emma, Forver Ago" provided the way through to the end of the book I am writing. In  it, I found the inspiration to plow on and somehow, I cleared the path to the end of the book. Praise be to God. What I love about the CD is that it asks the right questions. Because if we don't ask the right questions and reflect our present realities, the answers don't stick.

We in the Church are awesome at providing ample evidence, like feet of snow, to the questions that unbelievers have not yet raised. We need to be patient and help them dig through the unearthed pile for them to even be able to articulate the questions. Just because we have the answer, Jesus, does not mean that  they have the questions.