Winter has stripped the trees of their leaves. Ice coats tree limbs. A freeze has encased our graceful evergreens. Frozen water beads on the hollies. And ice laces our metal deck chairs.

One February years ago we awoke to the snapping explosions of frozen limbs. The sap in the dogwood outside our bedroom window had begun to rise. An ice storm had frozen the sap and exploded many of its limbs, denuding the tree down to its major trunks. That dogwood grew new branches and each spring has rewarded us with a stunning display of blooms and provided shade for azaleas and yews beneath its spreading boughs.

Much has been stripped of us in 2020. We lost people dear to us. We cancelled travel visits. We stopped shopping in local stores. Restaurant dining was out of the question. Our church went to online services. The library closed. We suspended many favorite activities. Worst, we were cut off from precious time with our families and friends.

We watched with horror a divided nation, desperate for answers and struggling for a way forward in a chaotic, troubling world. We examined ourselves for unreasonable righteousness and found ourselves lacking. At times we discovered kindness unappreciated and misinterpreted. What was all the suspicion about? The anger? The shouting? The violence? The mean memes?

Do we fear winter? Do we see the stripping of the leaves as an attack? The icing up as permanent? If our plants ruin, do we sink into malaise or strike out against the air that breathes its temperature through our plans?

If we spoke these fears, we might scare people. Not to mention ourselves. Hopelessness is not sturdy. Some trees suffer and fall. They break apart and leave a mess. But others stand for a thousand years, withstanding fire and wind.

We have learned from 2020. We can stand with each other, comfort one another even when we aren’t in the same room together. We can be patient while terrible dilemmas confound us. We can trust wise and learned people to give us solutions and hope. We can forgive anger because we understand its base root, fear. We can appreciate one another because, even if we disagree, we need one another to hammer out our journeys. Disappointment and horror are woven throughout human history. But the providence of God continues to be available to us.

Remember the exploding tree in the ice storm. Noisy. Frightening. Unstoppable. But…Renewed and healed even though scarred, as are we.

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Job 10:12 —You gave me life and showed me kindness, and in your providence watched over my spirit

The year—2020– being what it is and all (let’s just skip that part) we decided to put up our Christmas tree.

In recent Christmas seasons our artificial tree remained stored in the garage attic because we said we were usually away visiting people. In truth, to move the tree from storage to the living room was a pain in the patoot.

The tree’s container, a large cardboard box, lay across rafters in the garage attic. After wrestling the box to the top of the attic stairs, Herb would slip a grappling hook into a handhold at the top of the box. Using a long rope, he would lower the box slowly down the stairs while I stood beneath as the brake. We would then lift the box onto a dolly and wheel it down the driveway and across the sidewalk to the front door. Assembly was the easy part—until we had to reverse the process in order to move the tree back to the attic, without the assistance of gravity.

Since there will be no traveling to other homes this year, we are in charge of our own Christmas cheer. Wrestling with our tree actually sounded like fun. A challenge to conquer. We imagined the brightly lit tree, framed in the bay window while we sipped hot cocoa and listened to music.

Down the tree came—grappling hook, dolly, out of the box and assembled.

“Did you know we bought this tree in 2008?” Said Herb as he plugged in the lights. The bottom of the tree sparkled brightly, but the top half was as dark as night. Pitiful.

“Just leave it to me,” said my man. I disappeared. I learned a long time ago not to hang around while our hero attempted an improbable fixit. Two hours later he admitted defeat.

“We could go cut a cedar down,” I said. He gave me the look, You have got to be kidding. “Or we could go to Hobby Lobby and buy a new one. If the parking lot is full, we will just forget it.” Off we went in the SUV. The closer we got to Hobby Lobby, the busier the traffic. You’d think because of the pandemic people would know to stay home. Oh the irony. The store’s parking lot was packed with circling cars, ours included.

So we went home without a tree. What did it matter? Just a Christmas tree. Not important. Sigh. We packed up the broken tree and took it to the street, in the rain.

A week later Amazon delivery brought a big box to our doorstep. In it was a tree just the right size for two old folks to move without a grappling hook, a rope, and a dolly. An angel had decided we should not be alone at Christmas without a brightly lit tree.

The tree sparkles with bright red balls and white lights. Angels carved from wood by Herb in 1992 hang on its branches. It’s the best tree ever!

Fall has arrived here in Kentucky, and with it, relief from the hot humid, heavy, air of July and August. A heat index of 105 degrees Fahrenheit is not uncommon here.

Air conditioning (patented as “an apparatus for treating air”) was invented by Willis Carrier in 1902. By 1947 [according to the history of air conditioning, energy.gov] 43,000 homes had air conditioning systems. Neither my or my husband’s family was one of those homes.

Herb’s mother hung wet dish towels in open windows. Because the house lacked electricity, there were no fans. Relief was attained from an outdoor shower rigged from a horse tank atop a storm cellar. Tepid water was gravity fed through a pipe from the well on a hill above the homesite. Today Herb has a tolerance for heat that withers me.

My family lived in temperate San Mateo County, just south of San Francisco. When the heat rose, we cranked open windows to catch ocean breezes. I did, however, as a child, experience hot, humid summer air at my grandparents’ farm in Nebraska. We slept on cots on a screened-in side porch. A fan swung back and forth over the glistening bodies of my brothers and me as we drifted off, the sounds of crickets and cows sifting through the heavy night air.

In the past my husband and I have fled Kentucky in July and sometimes in August, to Appalachia or the Rockies. Under current pandemic circumstances, however, we are not going anywhere but the grocery store and occasionally Lowe’s.

In August our two air conditioners hum incessantly after ten in the morning until midnight while we work at living well within the comfort of home.

The truth is we are privileged. We aren’t worn out from the heat. We aren’t hanging dish towels in our windows or sleeping on a screened-in side porch. We aren’t struggling to earn a living or stay well in 100 degree heat. We indeed aren’t struggling in any remarkable way.

A different kind of heat has blown across our country. In August Federal troops descended upon the city of Portland ostensibly to protect the federal courthouse. This week in Louisville, Kentucky, protestors are incensed and angry over the indictment of wanton endangerment in a police shooting of Breonna Taylor, asleep in her bed, after a no knock warrant went awry. On September 12, a four hour stand off occurred between police and protestors in Rochester, NY.

A rising tide of people are pushing back against the country’s embedded system of racism. The largest body of demonstrators in the history of our country have decided they have seen and heard enough. How I wish the cooling rhetoric of peace and reason could have blown through the air of protest! What if walking arm in arm and chanting “I can’t breathe,” or shouting “Say her name!” had caused a pause in the system just long enough for some reasoned adjustments to the systemic racism in our country, especially in law enforcement and justice.

Instead we are witnessing the equivalent of raising the thermostat to 200 degrees when the temperature outside is 90.

Once the heat rises and shifts to rage, violence follows. Everyone becomes accountable for violence. Even I feel accountable in my comfortable spot in Bowling Green, where I feed birds, plant trees, and write.

I’ve been called out for being naive for speaking for mercy, peace, and love. I take the accusation as a compliment. I’d rather be naive than silent. If we have the collective ingenuity to invent air conditioning and cool millions of buildings, we have the means for addressing systemic racism and promoting peaceful solutions. We need to learn how to cool ourselves and our neighbors, together, not hidden apart, not accusing, not attacking.

It’s not always easy to remember simple ways to promote peace and justice. Here are some suggestions:

Strengthen your knowledge. Read nonfiction articles and books based on serious research.

Donate to food pantries.

Hire people—housekeepers, gardeners, carpenters.

Wear a mask.

Deliver food to shut ins.

Visit your neighbors.

Contribute to community equity movements.

Share vegetables from the garden.

Make supportive phone calls.

Send cards.

Write about mercy and love.

Speak out but with grace.

Pray for justice and mercy. Thank you, Martin Luther King.

And stop wondering why that guy with the dark brown complexion is driving a Mercedes.

I’d like to hear what my readers would add to this list.

Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” Matthew 7:12.