While I was in a bus wheeling across an unexpected white-capped landscape, from Smith College to Mount Holyoke College, I was thinking about the title of the book, ‘Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow
, and how much I related to that ‘feeling for snow’, if not the book itself. As we changed buses at midpoint I experienced absolute stillness, a hush of the world now. I was in a deep snow world and I was so grateful for it stilling my mind. At the same time I felt myself expanding. ‘Is this what death feels like,’ I wondered, ‘dissolving into the infinite?’ My face felt fresh from the freeze, my eyes bright – and the brightness wasn’t just physical, it seemed to reflect my sense of wonder. Van Morrison’s song, ‘Sense of Wonder’ wouldn’t have been out of place. I watched a squirrel scamper-skate across the snow, such a joyful sight. Nearby I saw my first snowman, complete with carrot nose and currant eyes, while a man dropped his snowboard and ski-sledded home.
Earlier in the week I headed to my first advanced storytelling workshop and got held up for 40 minutes as President Obama happened to be in the same street as my workshop. It seemed auspicious. When I finally got there I found we were an intimate class of six, including two facilitators. Together we comprised a theater director; someone who’d just returned from Haiti, her homeland; another had just finished cancer treatment; an author; a social worker and me. We’d been asked to bring some of our favorite objects to share and I realized that all mine were still in my Piccadilly home. I had to create my own stories from memory, invoking the qualities I found precious and I realized how much more often I was doing this in remembering my wonderful Uncle Don, gorgeous Charles, beautiful Stella, my Quaker friends, Eric and Rosemary, my Ethics in Leadership friends, Graeme and John, all having died in this last year. That stripped back feeling seems to get more defined with loss and grief, of friends and of home, and here I was feeling my world softened by snow. I really had a feeling for snow. ‘Ms Sloane’s Feeling For Snow’? More ‘Jane Sophia’s Feeling For Snow’, I decided.
At Mount Holyoke I had conversations with academics about a Gender and Development Lab concept I’d developed to give college students a grounding in how to apply a gender inclusive approach, how to prepare a gender budget and how to differentiate between the different needs and circumstances of women and girls as separate to those of boys and men in many communities. Often it was due to girls and women being disproportionately affected and in some countries it was men and boys who were disproportionately affected, such as being child soldiers in Uganda and victims of landmines in Cambodia.
Time spent with the College President’s staff, and briefly the President, was energizing and renewing. Later, I looked out of the window of my room and saw snow dancing across the sky. What a performance! I stepped out and responded in kind, arms akimbo, lightly leaping. Shortly after, I encountered the President again. She’s an extraordinarily calm presence, an ethicist by background and someone who is an inspired leader. In so being she’s providing a strong foundation for this college and a spirit of openness and deep enquiry.
The next day I attended a conference and, again, I thought about the musicality of storytellers as compared to many speakers as I watched endless PowerPoint presentations with little time for questions. I wished instead for Ted Talks or Open Space formats where genuine dialogue could happen. Seeking a different narrative, I returned to my room and read New York Times Op Ed writer, Gail Collins’ book, ‘When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present
I read The New York Times and, again, I was struck by the lyrical qualities of the paper. Aside from the regular stories told in the matrimonial section that tell how couples met and what their plans are, there are the editorials. In this copy there was an editorial quartet and the final piece, under the heading, ‘In The Sky Above’, was evocative:
‘Look for the Moon and the two bright objects below it – the planets Jupiter and, closer to the horizon, Venus – all in a rare moment of alignment. Mercury will have just set and in the east, mars will be rising. If you’re able to watch the sky several nights in a row, into early March, Jupiter and Venus will appear to be getting closer and closer to one another while the Moon drops behind even as it swells toward full moon on March 8. These are glorious nights for realizing just where we are, for looking out upon our neighboring plants and recognizing that we all do, indeed belong to a system: the solar system. With a little help, you can puzzle out just how these celestial movements work – why Jupiter and Venus appear to be approaching each other now, why the Moon lags further and further behind them. But even if you don’t, you can still look up at a remarkable night sky that reminds us how infinitesimal human affairs are against the celestial scale.’
All this felt profoundly reassuring to me and again I was glad I lived in a city where The New York Times was my daily read. Glad too that the full moon falls this year on International Women’s Day – March 8.
The next day, Josh collected me for our return home. I finished the other book that I was reading, Being Alive and Having to Die: The Spiritual Odyssey of Forrest Church
“We are never closer than when we ponder the great mystery that beats at the heart of our shared being…if we insulate ourselves from death we lose something precious, a sense of life that does know death, that elevates human to humane, that reconciles human being with human loss…’
“The most eloquent answer to death’s ‘no’ is love’s ‘yes’…The only question worth asking is where we go from here and the answer is ‘together.’”
It seems part of a universal story, mythical even, as infinite as the depth of the stars, as resonant as my feeling for snow.
The world is made of stories not of atoms
Muriel Rukeyser, Poet
The universe is made of music, not matter
Werner Heisenberg, Physicist
Jane Sloane