Frozen In Place

A light winter rain falls from the night sky as a thin sheet of ice ominously thickens here below. Not flat like a lake, but ice shaped to every sidewalk and tree and leaf. Perfectly encasing every fence, car and house. Life sheathed in ice.

We once sat a Zen retreat through an ice storm. The rain fell through the night as we sat. We lost power and sat in the dark with candles and blankets. The next morning the temperature dropped and a brilliant sun sparkled on the nearby forest of thickly iced trees. Our quiet meditation that winter morning was punctuated by an occasional ferocious crashing. Huge branches and whole trees gave way under the terrible weight of their transparent burdens. Tree limbs and ice gave way together, shattering our silence momentarily and then quickly finding their new tangled and broken rest.

There was nothing we could do. We kept on sitting. I still remember.

Now I wonder at how each of us can become encased in the transparent shell of our selves. The accretion of who we are and what we do, under certain circumstances, grows so thick we strain to move under the weight and restriction of it all. Frozen in familiar positions of defensive complaint, we may suddenly discover nothing else is possible. Suddenly immobile when the temperature drops, we await our still fate. Will we break before the warmth comes back? Some fall around us, broken by the weight of life or suffocated still in place. Will we loose limbs and survive disfigured or fall entirely? Or nothing at all?

The cold rain falls darkly and the clock ticks for all of us. Sometimes it is like this, these trials, these frozen sentences. Without choice, we hold still and await the outcome. No one is to blame. Sometimes it is just like this.