The cross-country skiers and snowmobilers had a brief period of happiness and then, this week, the temperatures rose and it started to rain. As always at the cusp of Late Winter and Spring Mud Season, the snow s loss reveals much that had been decently buried for the duration, and the air becomes redolent with the heavy aroma of old dog droppings. Crazy as it sounds, I d almost as soon we had more snow, just to cover it all up again. It is depressing. People are cranky.
People are ugly.
A person could try to escape, at least mentally, from the unpleasantness of this world into the beauty of the next. Because sometimes, this landscape really is terribly depressing, and we need whatever comfort we can find. There may or may not be pie in the sky when we die, but in this particular life, on this particular day, supper still has to be got, and the baby changed, and the income tax filled out, and the walk shoveled, and the laundry sorted and put away. Nobody said that faith would make life any simpler or easier. It doesn t, in fact, affect life in that sense at all.