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Counting Snails

April 25, 2022 by Todd Wedel Leave a Comment

The pandemic was hard. In California, we were in a lockdown. We were essentially constrained to home and short trips to necessary stores. The pandemic was hard on schools; as a headmaster, I was in the role of leading a school, teaching classes, and coordinating my own children’s Zooms and related distance learning. The pandemic was hard on individuals. I was in the role of leading a school as various parents and staff moved from questioning methodology to motives, from conduct to character.

One of the few reprieves was a morning walk. It was craved solitude. A time for centering and calming. Or so it should have been. But often a time of rumination. My younger daughter began asking to come with me. I was irritated but acquiesced. I found that often she would chatter, and I would distantly respond, or not. I would miss the life in her and all things.

Until we found the House of Snails. It was a wonder – a small plot in a raised bed in which we’d find a riot of snails. Tens, dozens. It became an every day liturgy to pause and count and wonder. And this one moment, this one connection, changed the tenor of the walks. Now there was communion – eager anticipation which centered our attention on the coming glory and expanded our presence to be fully alive together.

It was a one-year miracle. The next year, no such grace. But a reminder what graces are all about, invitations in themselves to a cloistered communion and through them to one expansive of all creation. The poem was a reflection on that grace.

Counting Snails

Even a walk
becomes a burden
when taken
in not love;
the horizon
a landmarked boundary,
conquest not beauty.
Silent or soft syllabled
conversations imagined, 
given voice,
cares related and ruminated,
bushes brushed by.

Until the House of Snails.
There my daughter,
ever moving every morning,
to whom I have been neglectful
negligent presence
in her joyous communion,
we pause to count
...10...12...20
how many today?
Point excitedly
at each new
shelled discovery
and question in wonder,

“Daddy, why did God make them slow?”

“For He delights
in manifold wonder
diverse.”

Catched up, enraptured
in revelation
of wonders wandered past,
yet stilled, rejoicing.

The elder wide and grey,
the younger 
translucent almost
luminescent in
morning’s sun.

This a new liturgy 
of practiced presence
and prayer’s patience.

Remember the snail,
O Martha,
busy and bothered
by many things
but not the much
that is the one
thing needful.

We labor and toil
without harried hurry,
reposed in movement,
calm and of no unsought care,
we receive Yahweh’s
given wondrous whorls.

We cannot as Mary
contemplate 
the higher mysteries;
yet as she
with the Master
content.

So you so learn
patience seeming plodding, 
given common grace.


Featured image by Hannah Sanders

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Todd Wedel
Todd Wedel
Todd loves children coming to know, love, and live into the good stories God is telling. His 22 years in Christian education were borne out of that desire - helping students see God's story unfolding in history and literature and expressing that story in their own writing and speaking.

He lives with his wife Rebeccca and two daughters in Oklahoma City. The plains give a vast canvas for the imagination's horizon.
Todd Wedel
Latest posts by Todd Wedel (see all)
  • Counting Snails - April 25, 2022

Filed Under: Fostering Imagination, Parenting, Poetry

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