there was a time

Last night I had the memory of skating on cranberry bogs when I was a kid – the bogs flooded to protect the tender plants from the cold, the resulting ice clear and black. Last night someone was talking about feeling on thin ice, the ice cracking, and I remembered the sound of long, slow cracks under the cranberry bog ice, and that they were safety cracks. We had James Brown back then too, and he’d sing about, “Trying to relieve that pressure.” And that was the safety cracks – releasing the pressure built up by the ice living its day-in/day-out icy life.

So I said that to the person feeling her life as being on cracking ice. Lots of those cracks making the ice stronger. Safer. More playable. Holding us up with its wintry fingers. An especially active faith.