Looking out the window as I write this, I see a landscape covered in snow. It’s been there for a while now, since the last few days of December, and it will likely stick around for weeks to come. The thrill of wonder I felt during the snow’s first gentle falling has been replaced by an exhausted sigh. It’s made every stroll outdoors a hazardous proposition, and my daily chores at the chicken coop an arduous slog. Nasty grey piles of the stuff line every street, leaking puddles that turn to ice slicks with each rise and fall in temperature.

This poem by Ursula Le Guin (from her collection So Far So Good) reminds me to look beyond the discomforts and inconveniences the snow causes to the spirit that resides in it—the same spirit that animates the bright yellow crocuses of spring, the deep green grass of summer, and the bold red maple leaves of fall. It’s the same spirit that animates my own body. And yours.

May we find the holy in them all.

Come to Dust

by Ursula K. Le Guin

Spirit, rehearse the journeys of the body
that are to come, the motions
of the matter that held you.

Rise up in the smoke of palo santo.
Fall to the earth in the falling rain.
Sink in, sink down to the farthest roots.
Mount slowly in the rising sap
to the branches, the crown, the leaf-tips.
Come down to earth as leaves in autumn
to lie in the patient rot of winter.
Rise again in spring’s green fountains.
Drift in sunlight with the sacred pollen
to fall in blessing.

All earth’s dust
has been life, held soul, is holy.