It’s snowing again in Washington, DC, for the second time in a week. Down and sideways, and at all angles, the snow recovers its empire from what was uncovered only days ago by shovel and plow. Eventually it will melt, or sublimate into the air, or be carried away by dump trucks. But suppose it continued, without stopping, for days and weeks, until it covered everything? What would be left besides a sterile white blankness?

Time is the blizzard that covers all. From millennium to era to eon, it covers everything, crushes everything, absorbs everything into itself without end, until time itself has stopped. What can be left under this inconceivable drift, beneath this immeasurable blizzard of time?

If God is love, and God is eternal, then we must know the answer. Love, within the world and beyond all duration, outlasts time itself.

THE SNOW

Suppose the snow came down and down
And filled the cracks in wounded Earth,
What would the cities and the towns
What would the streets and roads be worth?

From blankness until blankness they
Would lead to citadels of snow,
Compacted mountains, yesterday
Would never change and never go

And all the proud and useless things
That were before would never be
Again, and only wind would sing
The anthems of eternity

But peace would be, an end to war,
An end to pride and violence,
Deception and the craft of whores,
Indulgent selves and vain pretence

But also love, except perhaps
It would depart for other lands,
Escape from death’s deceiving trap
That even killed the Son of Man

Where sanctuary it would find,
Immortal garden of the blessed,
To leave the frozen world behind,
The rigid hearts and all the rest

But no He said, I will remain
Although the world grows cold and dead
Until the end, and love sustain
In flesh and blood, in wine and bread