The first time I saw snow—real snow, not the tiny, little dew-drop snow that fell on Charleston when I was living there—was in the Howard Johnson’s parking lot in Norwich, New York, the town I would call home for eleven years.
I was five-years-old, and I still remember racing out into the parking lot with my mom and dad to see this beautiful thing. The sky was dark and from it fell what looked like tiny stars that gently touched my hands and my face before vanishing, melting in an instant.
But what melted on me, clung to the cold pavement and the hoods and roofs of cars, blanketing everything in white.
A second later, my parents introduced me to a custom common in the north—the snowball fight.
What I remember next is laughter and joy. I had never felt so happy. I had never seen my parents as happy as they were in those few minutes that snowballs darted here and there, arcing in the night sky.
I tasted snow for the first time that night, fresh from the clouds above and it tasted like cold and ice and earth.
I still carry that joy with me. That memory is still strong.
There is a joy in things that are new, like the joy of a first snow, or the joy we feel when we ride our bike for the very first time, the joy of the first day of school, the joy of learning to swim. Of course those things are usually mixed with a fair amount of anxiety too, but it’s the joy that always breaks through.
And the firsts we experience as children are usually the most joyful of all.
What has happened to me over the last five months is a reawakening of that child within. Suddenly everything is new. Everything is a first. And I’m suddenly so happy, I can’t stop smiling.
A few weeks ago, Pastor Debbie asked me to fill in one Sunday as a lector. I was so excited I could barely contain myself. I had wanted to be a lector for so long. I told Pastor Debbie that I felt like I was being called up from the minor leagues.
I was so excited that I completely forgot that when I ended the reading with “the word of the Lord” that the congregation responded “Thanks be to God.” And so when they did respond, I was almost knocked off my feet by the force of those words spoken by a hundred people.
It was amazing.
Just last week, I served as an acolyte for the first time. Again, it was something I had always wanted to do when I was a kid, but never happened because the church I was attending didn’t allow altar girls at the time and by the time they did, I was too old to serve.
But in the Episcopal Church, acolytes can be children or adults and I saw a need for one at the 8:00 service and volunteered.
And again, it was amazing. I was overjoyed. I didn’t have much to do, light the candles, take the gifts, present the offering to Pastor Debbie for blessing. I carried the gospel. Mostly, I just stood there grinning because it was beautiful, it was so wonderful to be there—up there, at the altar during the service, and especially during the Eucharist.
The liturgy is a beautiful thing and experiencing it as a member of the congregation and experiencing it up by the altar as an acolyte are two very different, but equally blessed things. I don’t know that I prefer one experience to the other.
But there is an awareness of something holy when you stand up at the altar. The Eucharistic Prayer feels more present, more defined. There is a certain connection there that I had never experienced before.
It was a joyful first for me and it won’t be a last. Kay Redfield Jamison writes in Exuberance: The Passion for Life, “ As C.S. Lewis has observed, anyone who experiences joy will want it again.”
Without a doubt. Joy lingers. Joy makes us search out those experiences again.
Even joys we experienced as children.
Because, after all, there are still days I miss the snow.
