By Joan Alexander
“Like snow in summer or rain in harvest, so honour is not fitting for a fool.” Proverbs 26:1 (NRSV)
Where do you come up with your ideas? Snow in summer? Haven’t we had enough snow this winter? Why even think about it extending into spring…let alone summer?! And what does this verse from Proverbs even mean anyway?
To all of these questions I say, “I don’t know.” And yet here we are asking questions that don’t have easy answers, referring to a book many call the Holy Bible, and me — writing from the heart and seeing where it may take us.
The first summer I lived in the Kootenays (2015), many areas were impacted by the fires. We were fortunate here in Castlegar compared to some of our neighbours but we did experience days of smoke and intense heat.
One afternoon, when coming out of a grocery store, there was ash slowly falling from the sky. It landed in my hair and on my vehicle. At first I thought it was snow but it didn’t melt like snow does.
This Eastern city girl had never experienced falling ash before, except perhaps years ago at a campsite. I was scared! Like a fool (yes, that Bible verse again), I jumped into the car and sped to the new house that didn’t feel like home yet. I ran inside where the unpacked boxes greeted me, the uncurtained windows gazed back at me, and the hollow echoes of the empty rooms made me so homesick that I burst into tears.
What a fool I was to think that it was snowing in the middle of a hot summer day! When I had longed to move to this part of Canada and make it my home, why did I feel so afraid and disoriented? And, now, as I write this, why do I hesitate to share it with you…embarrassed at how foolish you may think me to be?
The answer to my own questions is the same as to yours, “I don’t know.” What I do know is that when we share our fears and allow others to see us at our most foolish, then we honour the humanness in us all.
So if snow should ever fall in summer, let’s make a pact: together we will cry and laugh and build the bestest snow person ever!