Throw Me a Rope

On Monday, a Northeaster, a full-blown blizzard, blanketed my hometown and region with 18 plus inches of snow. 

Snow brings beauty, white flakes floating in the air, a winter wonderland and if you’re lucky, the chance to pause and just be in the warmth of your home.

There is a hazardous condition called a whiteout, where you have no visibility.  In Parker J. Palmer’s book, “A Hidden Wholeness” he speaks about “a time when farmers on the Great Plains at the first sign of a blizzard would run a rope from the back door to the barn. They all knew stories of people who wandered off and been frozen to death, having lost sight of home in a whiteout while still in their own backyards.” 

Palmer goes on to share that we are living in a blizzard of another sort. “It swirls around us with fear, frenzy, greed and deceit, and indifference to the suffering of others.” 

The poet Leonard Cohen said, “the blizzard of the world” has overturned the order of the soul”.

The soul, which is always our guide and close at hand.  Yet time after time the blizzard overtakes us. 

Who or what is the rope that helps you find “home”?  I look around my own life and see a family who is the rope to an addict, a friend a rope to her elderly mother, a Councilman a rope to his town. 

It’s not easy being the rope. It’s tiresome, challenging and sometime soul gutting. In this tug of war, the essence of our soul provides strength, resilience and hope for others to find home. 

“Wholeness”, according to Palmer, “does not mean perfection, it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life.  Devastation, be it a snowstorm, a relapse, or a road without salt can be a seedbed for new life.” 

Your soul is sending you a rope in the form of a person, place or thing.  Are you ready to catch it? 

Together we find our way home.

Love, 

Louisa 

P .S. I love to connect, feel free to comment.