Mani Freddi, Cuore Caldo

Two weeks ago, we had the first truly cold day since I've lived in Washington DC.  I put on my heaviest jacket, bundled up and took a deep breath before taking those first tentative steps outside.  My hands were cold, but my heart was warmed when a stranger on the street smiled at me and said encouragingly, "stay warm out there."  His glowing smile was contagious and I was determined to carry it with me, even when a gust of wind that surely came straight from the Arctic itself assaulted me as I turned the corner.  As two involuntary tears streamed down my cheeks, I held tightly onto my hood and that warm smile.

I don't know much about winter, but I'm familiar with bitter winds. We can measure the windchill in the air, but it takes more than thermometers to understand the windchill in our hearts.  It's a cold world out there, after all.  Shootings and bombings and hostages.  It's amazing how things happening far away can hit so close to home.  We watch wars play out on television and senseless acts of violence happen daily in our own cities, on our own streets, right in front of us.  The great Italian author Cesare Pavese once wrote "ogni guerra e' una guerra civile"- "every war is a civil war."

And that doesn't even begin to account for the individual tragedies that we could each write.  The stories of heartbreak and grief and betrayal, the loved ones we have lost, the addictions that have haunted us, the times when trust was broken--we carry these things like ice in bare, frozen hands, trying to make sense of a world that can be unflinchingly callous.

And what can we do about our vulnerable hearts, so often left out in the cold?  We can always take the easy way out and close ourselves off like we close our borders.  We can lock ourselves away from the cold, barricaded in a dark room alone.  We can meticulously turn the keys in each lock and stack furniture in the entrance way, as if grief and joy entered through different doors.  But despite our best attempts at insulation, the cold will always find a way in.

The world is big and it is scary.  We have to recognize that our hearts will surely take a beating, released on their own in a place where loss and suffering and grief are waiting around every corner to have their go.  But bloodied and bruised as we may be, shattered and torn and broken as we are, we have to get up off of the ground.  Even when all the odds are against us, we have to go back into the ring, gritting our teeth, determined to love again.

I certainly don't have all the answers but I've found that human warmth is about more than body temperature.  Someone wise once said that one of the great miracles of friendship is its unique ability to multiply the joys while dividing the sorrows.  I think of fresh-baked cookies and hugs that stay with you like a hearty meal.  I'm not talking about the delicate, cautious, polite hugs but rather the stick-to-your-ribs kind of hugs, the not-letting-go kind of hugs.  And I think of the humbly defiant chrysanthemums, which have recently become my favorite flower.  They refuse to give up their seemingly dainty petals, though all the other flowers might.  They will hold out in spite of the cold.

We too may find that we are more resilient than we initially thought, that we can, in fact, weather the cold.

So put on a scarf if you have to, but don't hide from the cold.  Fearlessly fill your lungs with the cold air and remember that this too is a part of life on an ever-changing planet.  The winter may be brutal, but we must recognize that even winter can't last forever.  Winter, after all, is followed by Spring.

Until then,

Stay warm out there.