I hate winter.

Yes, I’m a New Englander. No, I’ve never lived further than 10 miles from Boston except for the three years I moved down south for seminary. (…In New Haven, Connecticut.) Yes, I grew up building snow forts in the big snow banks in the driveway and drinking hot chocolate at the skating rink after a hard hour pushing two stacked Hood milk crates all around the ice.

I still hate winter.

I mean, come on… Who wants to shiver through a 12° day? Winter starts with the darkest and gloomiest month of the year, followed by a month or two of bitter cold, followed by eight to ten weeks of false springs that lift your spirits and are immediately followed by dreary cold and damp.

I hate winter. But even I will admit that nothing lifts the spirits of your average four-year-old more than a good 11” of snow. Nothing breaks up the tedium of a long winter of cold, dry days than three hours playing “Sugar-Land” in a landscape iced with confectionery snow. No temperature change is more satisfying than coming in from a cold walk to a warm apartment—it’s even better, I’ll admit, than air conditioning on a hot day.

I’m reminded, on cold winter days like these, of the words of the canticle we call the Benedicite, short for its opening words in Latin: Benedicite, omnia opera Domini — “Bless the Lord, all you works of the Lord.”

The poem invokes the whole order of creation, from the stars to the seas, from the beasts to priests, calling on every slice of creation to “Glorify the Lord…praise him and highly exalt him for ever.” Even the wind and weather are called upon to praise God:

Glorify the Lord, every shower of rain and fall of dew, *
    all winds and fire and heat.
Winter and Summer, glorify the Lord, *
    praise him and highly exalt him for ever.
Glorify the Lord, O chill and cold, *
drops of dew and flakes of snow.
Frost and cold, ice and sleet, glorify the Lord, *
    praise him and highly exalt him for ever.

BCP p. 88

The same God, after all, who made the snow day made the bitter cold. The same God who made the fiery summer sun made the wintry arctic blast. And like members of a cosmic choir, they are different but not (one hopes) dissonant. They sing in a polyphonic harmony in which each’s existence enriches the other. The heat of summer makes us appreciate, in other words, the cold of winter. Supposedly.

The same is true for all the seasons of our lives. “Silver linings” are a cliché in difficult times, but that doesn’t mean they’re not there. There are consolations tucked within every season; not only in the reminder that it will not last forever, but hidden within that very time itself.

Every dark winter’s night contains within it the promise of a warm fire. Every hot summer day holds the possibility of jumping into the sea. Every drop of dew and flake of snow glorifies the Lord; every blizzard in our lives, however literal or metaphorical, invites us to see God’s glory revealed in and through and behind it, even if only by contrast.

Or at least it gives us a chance to play Sugar-Land.