Why does snowfall still awe us?

We long for snow this time of year because longing is all there is to do.

Josh Richards

Josh is a curate in London, and is completing a PhD in theology.

Durham Cathedral.

Jeffrey Zhang on Unsplash.

Why are we so drawn to snow? And what does it say about us that we are? The German theorist Hartmut Rosa begins his wonderfully titled book The Uncontrollability of the World with these words:

"Do you still remember the first snowfall on a late autumn or winter day, when you were a child? It was like the intrusion of a new reality. Something shy and strange that had come to visit us, falling down upon and transforming the world around us, without our having to do anything. An unexpected gift. Falling snow is perhaps the purest manifestation of uncontrollability. We cannot manufacture it, force it, or even confidently predict it."

Rosa argues that we find greatest meaning in that which remains uncontrollable, beyond our grasp. We long for snow this time of year because longing is all there is to do. Artificial snow will always disappoint. We cannot manufacture our own awe.

Rosa warns that modernity is built around "the idea, the hope and desire that we can make the world controllable." At a certain point more influence over something results in that thing being reduced to a mere instrument capable only of frustrating our desires.

I sit down to watch a film that's finally streaming. It gets a bit slow 20 minutes in. I start watching something else. I wonder if I should have seen the film in the cinema.

I catch up with the podcast of the event I decided not to go to. I speed it up as I put the washing in. I couldn't tell you what they discussed.

I turn to social media as one might turn to a snow globe. In its careful curation, all I feel is the ache for the real thing.

In each of these cases, technology has, at least on one level, given me greater control and allowed me to shape my environment in greater accordance with my desires. Rosa identifies that all desire is “driven by a longing to bring something as yet unreachable within our reach.” And yet, in each case, that which I desired—the experience of watching a great film, participation in a stimulating conversation, meaningful human connection—is jeopardised by this supposed improvement.

So, it makes sense that we are on the lookout for snow at this time of year. Something in each of us is still looking to be caught up in something beyond us.

What we think of as a drive to increase choice is often really about control. Putting it in these terms does not invalidate the drive but it should make us more alert to the cost. Greater choice for me means greater control over something or someone.

At the same time, greater control over the environment can also mean less self-control. I am a bundle of contradictory desires, and the more I am empowered and encouraged to pursue all of them, the more I am empowered to pursue none of them consistently. (I still haven't finished Inside Out 2)

The self-frustrating desire that Rosa identifies sits at the heart of so many of the most important debates from artificial intelligence to assisted dying. Control can be conflated with dignity or fulfilment. As uncontrollability is marginalised so too do we risk marginalising that which makes life worth living.

In the season of Advent, Christians remember the birth of Jesus, but its primary purpose was and is to direct our gaze to the end of the world. We might be able to sentimentalise and sanitise the Christmas story, but Advent's apocalyptic summons will always resist our desire for control. It proclaims that we are going to die, that the world will end, and that we will all be judged. You are not in control.

No matter how exhaustive and efficient we believe our control to be, Advent reveals it to be a pretence. There will always be things beyond our grip, and we spend a great deal of time distracting ourselves from them, pretending that it is otherwise.

Advent assures us that we can face this reality because we do not so alone. The God who came as a baby and was executed, experiencing the extremes of human vulnerability, is with us now. It is that God who comes at the end. It is that God whose love gives us comfort and courage.

So, it makes sense that we are on the lookout for snow at this time of year. Something in each of us is still looking to be caught up in something beyond us, something that no technology or system can organise or tame. Snow then acts as an echo of that more profound sense of vulnerability that we are each tempted to avoid. It stirs up our longing to be confronted with something genuinely awe-inspiring.

In the wildness of Advent, we find the promise of what we have longed for: a God who will come and restore all things, an uncontrollable God who comes like snow. Advent calls us to put down the manmade slush and prepare for the coming blizzard. Doing so might help us see where this new reality already intrudes.

Article

Community

Creed

Sin

13 November 2024

3 min read

In the city of broken windows

Our fractures become fractal, breaking bigger and bigger windows.

Jamie Mulvaney

Jamie is Associate Minister at Holy Trinity Clapham, London.

a multi-paned window mural shows people while amid it are broken window panes.

A broken window mural, Ellis Island Immigrant Hospital.

Rhododendrites, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.

We weren't expecting a knock on the door from our next-door neighbour on New Year's Day. It was pouring with rain, and said rain was pouring into the boot of our car, with the window smashed. Thanks for letting us know. Annoying, inconvenient and expensive. But just how expensive is a smashed window?

The 'broken windows theory', that visible signs of crime, antisocial behaviour and civil disorder begets more serious crimes, was introduced American sociologists James Q. Wilson and George Kelling:

'Social psychologists and police officers tend to agree that if a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken. This is as true in nice neighborhoods as in rundown ones. Window-breaking does not necessarily occur on a large scale because some areas are inhabited by determined window-breakers whereas others are populated by window-lovers; rather, one un-repaired broken window is a signal that no one cares, and so breaking more windows costs nothing. (It has always been fun.)'

This is not an academic theory. Where I live in London, i took the local council 1,315 days to replace a local resident's broken window. The sense of decay extends beyond borders, with fewer than half the residents thinking they live on clean streets, with rubbish and weeds gone unchecked. It is also one of the worst boroughs in London for varying types of crime, and over the past few years often being the worst. It's hard not to think the little things and the big things are linked. In other news, the now-resigned CEO of the council has pleaded guilty to drink-driving, failing to stop after a car crash and driving without insurance, and not guilty to possession of cocaine.

Our problems in society all found their greenhouses somewhere inside of us.

Crime is on the move. As homes have become more difficult to burgle, crime has been pushed out onto the streets with shoplifting and bike theft. The Economist recently reported that 'stolen bikes and e-bikes have also become the getaway vehicle of choice for thieves, according to the Merseyside police. In one way or another, some 80 per cent of acquisitive crime in Liverpool involves a nicked bike.' It's going to be fascinating to see the wider impact, but simply by stopping suspicious riders and marking thousands of bikes across Liverpool, reported thefts have fallen by 46 per cent between July 2023 and July 2024 compared with the previous year.

These problems can't be solved by overstretched police or the council. Everyone's responsible so no one's to blame. Practical implementations of the broken windows theory have not been without controversy. But for those of us who live in urban environments, to look out from our homes is to see a city of broken windows. The impact is more than weeds 'uprooting' pavements: it's an uprooted society. Correlation and causation might be blurred, but that's the point. In Christianity, sin is understood as having a polluting effect. Just as fossil fuels in China will pollute the atmosphere for someone in Scotland, sin is not hermetically sealed. Our problems in society all found their greenhouses somewhere inside of us.

Jesus said 'what comes out of you is what makes you 'unclean'. For from within, out of your hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and they make you 'unclean'.' They pollute our lives. And they pollute the world around us.

The Christian church, much like many institutions, is reckoning with prioritising competency at the expense of character. Little sins are not so little when they permeate and promote a culture where certain sins are permissible. Our fractures become fractal, breaking bigger and bigger windows.

All this sounds pretty bleak and Dickensian when of course there's always another city to see: full of life, vibrancy and joy. But we'd be wilfully ignorant to ignore the disorder of broken windows and broken lives all around us. It might overwhelm us, or our eyes might glaze over as we see those broken windows. But we'd do well not to ignore the broken windows within us too. For our sake, and the sake of our streets.