Thoughts of the use of the word snowflake or snowflakes in our current political climate brought my thinking to an article published in the Juneau Empire many years ago. Somehow the subtle message in this article, written by Bea Shepard, who was a lay speaker at the Douglas Community United Methodist Church before her passing, came to my mind. I’d like to quote it just as it was published in a Living and Growing article saved from years ago and yet seems appropriate today.
Bea wrote : A Nony Mous has written many exceptional items over the years. This one, it seems to me, is so good it’s crying out to be used right now. (I confess I should like very much to be able to say I wrote it!)
“Tell me the weight of a snowflake,” a small mouse asked a wild dove.
“Nothing more than nothing,” was the answer.
“In that case I must tell you a marvelous story,” the small mouse said.
“I sat on a fir branch, close to the trunk when it began to snow, not heavily,
not in a raging blizzard, no, just like a dream, without any violence. Since
I didn’t have anything better to do I counted the snowflakes settling on the
twigs and needles of my branch. Their number was exactly 3,471,951.
When the next snowflake dropped onto the branch — nothing more than nothing,
as you say, the branch broke off.”
Having said that, the small mouse ran away. The dove, since Noah’s time an
authority on the matter, thought about the story for awhile, and finally said to
herself, “Perhaps there is only one person’s voice lacking for peace to come in
the world.”
What a story. Could it be either your voice or mine? Let’s find out. All together, now, let’s say the word.
Bobi Trani
Juneau
