On the Horizon Spring 2019

Letter from the editor—Snow Day

How does the ECK work in the everyday world? How can you perceive it with your senses and make it “real”? To me it feels so quiet and invisible and yet so capable of affecting everything at every moment.

This February we were bombarded with news of the coming snow event. It became an hourly topic of speculation. “What if it snows while I’m busy at work? Do I need to stock up on enough food to outlast the apocalypse? How many people actually know how to drive in it when it gets really bad?” The excitement and stress kept building. And then, to my surprise, it actually happened.

I woke up to a changed world. It felt warm, cozy, and delicious to be inside looking out at the falling flakes. The feeling of getting an unexpected reprieve from the responsibilities of work was guilt free. Part of me wanted to snuggle into the couch with breakfast and a book and let the hours pass by at the pace people probably felt was the norm a century ago. But another part of me was restless. That itchy feeling cajoled me into seven layers of clothes and out the door before I could talk myself out of it. It was the urge of a little kid who knows that something is up and doesn’t want to miss out. From the moment I stepped out onto the subtle crunch of the white sidewalk I could see the change. Like a soft wind passing through the entire city, it touched everything.

There were a few people outside, not many, preparing to do a few things to their cars and walkways. But they were also taking a moment, a pause, to be still and just feel the world around them. Even people inside were standing in front of their windows, looking into the infinite distance of a mesmerizing whiteness coming down. A few of the early risers were scraping and shoveling as I passed, and for the first time, as if it was everyday routine, we greeted each other with giddy smiles and actually spoke in full, conversational sentences. We even volunteered to help each other if it looked like help was needed. The push and rush of self-important traffic was sweetly absent. The need to hurry, to be first in line, to get things started, was gone. Little kids came waddling out their front doors like grinning marshmallows and threw themselves into the nearest snow drift. Parents laughed out loud at the unexpected freedom of being able to have fun with their kids rather than hurriedly split off to work and school.

The snow, I realized, was something else right now. It wasn’t a cold, wet, dangerous obstacle to getting important things done. It wasn’t even an excuse to do something different. It was an invitation to see things differently, to experience them differently, and to break the habits of perception. It was an invitation to change. It was so commonplace and so natural that it was easily overlooked. It was just snow. No big deal. But like the ECK, it was silently touching the world in almost every way possible. It was changing my perception of the world and my attitude in the moment. It felt like one of those perfect visuals that presents a metaphor that I can see, hear and touch for a second in time, giving me a glimpse into how the ECK works in my own life. In a few days it will be gone and the hustle of existence will rush back in. But for now, I am grateful for seeing it.

With heart,
Matt Brunner
On The Horizon Editor

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