Hearthfire’s retreat on Sunday, October 30, 2011 was envisioned as a day of slowing down to explore Presence. The unprecedented October blizzard helped facilitate just that: we received about a foot of snow the day before our intrepid retreaters traveled to us (from as far as Capetown). We needed only look outside for encouragement to slow down and the best possible model of radical presence. It called to mind this poem:
LIKE SNOW
Suppose we did our work
like the snow, quietly, quietly,
leaving nothing out.
~Wendell Berry