In the bleak midwinter

It's bitter cold today in the city. The already sub-freezing temperature is sharpened by a razor-blade wind. I decided to stay in, a more torturous decision than I'd expected. I'd planned to be at the Cathedral. To get there from here involves a lot of waiting - for a bus, for a train - in that wind. Staying home will be rational and smart.

That's my brain talking, with contributions from my fingers, nose, and toes, the first body parts that will most keenly feel the slash of the cold.

My heart has its own desires. It wanted to go. It wants community. It wants prayers. It wants the Eucharist. It does not understand physical cold.

While I was living in the Adirondack Park, I experienced physical cold surpassing any the city has been able to throw at me. I worked in a stable. Horses sprouted ice beards that hung from their muzzles. We had heaters in the water troughs - the water froze anyway. "Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone", exactly as described in In the Bleak Midwinter. I watched for black ice on the long road from my house to the barn, even while knowing that I probably would not be able to actually see it till I was on it, skidding. I often saw cars half-buried in snowbanks on the side of the road; once, mine was one of them. Folks up there stop to help if they can. Sooner or later, someone will drive by in a truck with a winch, and will pull you out of the bank. It's what neighbors do.

I have not felt such intense cold since I moved away from those brooding, austere mountains. Nor have I seen the Northern Lights, shimmering red and green and high in the sky, moving like a curtain hanging in front of an open window. I have not seen the millions of stars that routinely twinkle in that cleaner, colder sky. I have not heard the pop and snap of sap freezing in the tree trunks. I have not smelled the balsam I'd brush against when, lured by moonlight gleaming on blue snow, I followed tracks into the night. I have not heard a barred owl shriek, or ravens rollicking in the sky. And I have not seen the lights of my own house, gleaming yellow-gold in the distance, with smoke rising from the chimney in defiance of the cold, with a promise of warmth to melt the ice in my hair.

But we all know there is another kind of cold that the heart feels all too keenly.

Though I have several friends in my building, out in the streets of this neighborhood I have felt that other kind of cold, a sort of resolute exclusion. There is a large faith-based population here, and I know the fire of its beliefs has burned bright for centuries, and that the community is warm and loving. Not to the outsider, though. Not at all. Smiles are not returned. Eye contact is avoided. It is like coming upon a group of people circled tightly around a bonfire, warming themselves. An outsider may walk around the circle, but will not be acknowledged in any way. All the warmth is inside the circle, and you are not. Because they do not see me, it's hard to imagine these neighbors stopping their trucks to winch me out of a snowbank. Yet there is no doubt that they are good people, or at least as good as any other people are.

The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine is a house with many functions. The largest Gothic cathedral in the world, it is an architectural landmark. It is the mother church of the diocese of New York of the Episcopal Church of America, and it houses the Bishop's throne. It is a place of spectacle and ritual, "a house of prayer for all people", and the home of the Congregation of St. Saviour, to which I belong.

But some experience it as cold. Tourists, loudly excited to be in the building and perhaps unaware that it's a real church, are shushed sometimes in a way that hisses the opposite of welcome. The space is so vast that the visitor seeking to worship can find it difficult to see and impossible to hear the service. We who know each other may gather in groups that are hard to approach. When we form our circle for the Eucharist, some are reluctant to join, for fear of doing something "wrong". I have heard all these criticisms, but none of this happens to me when I come in as congregation member Laurel, who usually sits up front. So I just assume we do the best we can, and that, now and then, someone slips through the net of welcome. Not much to be done about it. A few weeks ago, though, I walked in late, after all the service leaflets were gone, sat at the back, and was surprised to feel the chill of being a stranger. The fact that I had not been deliberately excluded did not change the feeling. And though it was not as strong as the chill I've felt in my neighborhood, it had the same effect.

All I can do on the sidewalks around my building is continue to smile (and mean it) and say hello without requiring acknowledgement. Believe me, that's a big spiritual discipline for a performer!

In my church, though, I see I have not been doing my part. I must be more present, help more, ensure that no one entering feels as I did that Sunday past. For coldness is not what we mean to convey when people come in hoping to find warmth, and it's not what we are enjoined to convey. On the contrary. Welcome for the stranger is in our spiritual DNA. When we gather in community, we are at the biggest, best party ever (in one of the biggest rooms, too!). If there is not room for everyone here, where is there room? If there is not welcome here, where is there welcome? And if we cannot share the warmth of our fire, then it will seem a very poor fire indeed.