Snow Play
What do you get when you expect the unexpected?
Here’s one thing: Muslims playing in the snow! 
When most people think of Islam, they think of a desert religion. There’s good reason: it’s a tradition that was born in the sands of Arabia and extended its reach on the backs of camels. The most common images of Muslims that come our way include hot sun, tents, and turbans. But here we are, living among Muslims in the foothills of the Himalayas, and there’s a lot more snow around than sand!
After a dry winter, March has brought late, heavy snow. Last Sunday we took our landlord and his family along for a day in the mountains to enjoy some snow play. We drove about an hour and a half up to a summer resort area where there was a good two feet of fresh, clean powder on the ground. Our landlord managed to connect with an old friend who lives there, and he found someone to rent us a sled. My husband took our landlord’s 3-year-old son for short but thrilling sled rides down a hillside. The rest of us couldn’t tell which of the two “boys” enjoyed it more! 
The snow was falling around us in slow, fat flakes. Other people were building snowmen and having snowball fights. We ended our visit with lunch and tea back at the home of our landlord’s friend.
Our day out in the snow was a nice change for all of us from the usual routine of study and housework. Does it surprise you that Muslims get excited about snowball fights and sledding? That they laugh when they roll off the sled at the bottom of the hill, and need help knocking the snow out of their boots? When we reach out and love people who seem so different than we are, we often find that they’re more like us than we expected.
Posted in Uncategorized and tagged sledding, snow by Lisa
Coming Home, and the First Snow!
We arrived home after our vacation just in time for the season’s first snow! It’s late this year—after September’s historic flood, the skies remained dry until yesterday. The snow had just started falling when we woke up, and as we ate breakfast we watched it blanket the ground with white. 
The snowflakes seemed to get bigger—soon it looked like popcorn falling out of a celestial popper. The snow stopped mid-morning; the weather warmed a little in the afternoon and most of it melted. But today we had more snow, and this time it’s staying put longer.
It was good to come back to our home of 10 months. On the last leg of our trip, we took a taxi to the Delhi airport for our flight home. In the terminal, we realized that we could spot the gate where our plane would board by the people waiting there—many were wearing the traditional clothing of our region. As we stood in line, we caught snatches of conversation around us and were excited to find that we hadn’t forgotten the language we’ve been studying! Later when we got to our house, our landlord’s 3-year-old boy met us on the front steps with a huge smile and started off on a rapid summary of everything that happened while we were gone, in his toddler-speak mixture of three languages. 
The following day I headed for the market to buy vegetables, and a neighbor woman standing outside her gate greeted me warmly. She grabbed my hand and tried to pull me into her house for chai; I had to pull hard to extricate my hand with a promise to come later. In many little ways, it was a sweet homecoming.
And the next day—snow! I’m really not a fan of cold weather, so what is it about snow that seems so beautiful? Perhaps it has to do with how the landscape is changed by the softness and purity of snow. 
Mud, asphalt, and piles of trash are all covered over, and the harshness of bare tree branches suddenly turns to lace. What grace does in our lives, snow does to the view out my window—same view, but transformed, redeemed, made lovely.
Posted in Uncategorized and tagged coming home, snow by Lisa