Whiter Snow

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(from Eric)
It was a very pleasant November, with just a hint of snow, and we were starting to wonder whether winter in the Alps meant clear valleys and snow-capped mountains surrounding us.
No.
It has been snowing all week, and then yesterday we heard that "the snow is coming".  Which I guess means the 6 inches up until then didn't count.  And lo and behold, it didn't.  It dumped about 10 more inches in the last 24 hours, and a crazy weather report predicted up to 1 meter (seriously?!) over the weekend.
They don't really plow the sidewalks here, and you can see below how socked in the cars are.  So, I'm kind of wishing we weren't on our last roll of toilet paper.  But my goodness, it is beautiful.  It's been the steady wet snow that sticks to everything with almost no wind, so every last little tree branch is white.  The parking lot in the picture has been the site of many snowball fights and the making of many a bonhomme de neige (snow man).  You wouldn't guess it by how white it still is.
In honor of the Christmas-y scenery and the fact that this may be the last white winter for our families for quite some time, I thought I'd post this song.  A winter song for Christmas time that's not really about Christmas (just like "Let it Snow", "Frosty" and others).  I wrote this song almost 13 years ago, amazingly.  When I met Rachel, she heard it and decided to marry me, so it will always be a favorite of mine.
Whiter Snow(free album download here)
The dusting of this frail world begins upon these treesIt stumbles down againAnd blankets all the soil that hidesbeneath its coat of freezeSo I slip under its covers, I hide under his wingsOpening my eyes to find a plane of newer things
Things that I had brushed aside or powdered into grainsMy fragile hands have brokenAll of the times I thought that I had come to danceAbove the weaker strainsSo I fall into a pile, and I hide under his wingsAs brokenness cries out to brokenness, as I begin to sing
Whiter snow, come and go, down underneath my feetLet your purer grace show all of your win in my defeatWhiter call, come and fall and fill in all of my tracksFor your end, it still remainsTo spring out of the pouring rain, andMake us new again
Lately it seems you've been finding me lost underall this blizzard of the swirling deepSoon it will melt as it soaks me on throughand then covers me again in its sleep
But what you have done is much thickerIt's much higher and wider than wordsCovering not that which you could make new and now,We are unfrozen, you're making us newAnd so we run with you in the nightWe are lifting our voicing to singJust for this moment to be here with youHeld in so tightly under your wings