What is that bright yellow thing in the sky where the grey clouds used to be?

The sun is shining, the birds are singing, the flowers are busting loose from the soil & the nasty ice/snow is fading into the cold recesses of properties where sun isn't likely to find it. I am always amazed at the staying power of a plowed up pile of snow. Once white and fluffy, once ripe fodder for snow-people or angels, or snowballs, this grayish white pile of snowy ice lasts forever even as the sun shines and the temperature climbs. One such pile lives in the 2nd Ave. parking strip that lines the church.

Taking up residence in a single parking space this pile of snow is about the size of of my old Ford Festiva. Jr. High Science tells us that heat, sunlight, and salt form a deadly combination for snow and ice, yet after many days of being exposed to at least the first two the pile remains & my guess it has a few more days left in it. But this, despite my surprise year after year, should be expected. After all there is a lot of snow. The outer layer reflects the sunlight which also insulates the bulk of the snow residing inside the mound & with tons of snow and ice the pile is built to last. It puts up a good fight for the changing environment that it currently finds itself in.

If I am honest, I am impressed with the pile. I think that it does something that we as a church have struggled with for sometime. Whereas a single layer of snow won't last an afternoon with a shining sun, the pile takes all those individual "layers" and brings them all together to form something stronger and more stable as a collective than could be achieved as a single individual. The "strength in numbers" lives out as the temperature climbs but the pile remains. As a church, not just Boulevard, but as an universal church we often fail in pile building because we are so accustom to individuality. We want to build up individuals but we often forget that wisdom exists as a group, that strength exists as a group, and it is only as a community that we can survive when the rising temperatures of our time arrive.

Are you part of a pile?