The snow came down hard on Sunday morning and the 1 to 3 inches they predicted was already on the ground before we left the hotel. As it brushed off the car the snow was like feathers or dandelion seeds in the wind. Every snow has its character and wispy snow is easy for tires to grip but blows cloudy and renders you momentarily sightless when trucks pass on the road. And one did, even in the short trip to St. Elias Church, and we held on and hoped that the driver in front of us wouldn't suddenly stop.

Heat was just coming on in the church when we arrived so there was the kind of cold of cement bricks still lingering when we stamped our feet, turned on the lights, and set the copy machine to its morning warm up. The routine is always the same and the old building gradually takes on a kind of life as task to task prepares us for the Liturgy ahead.

LaCrosse is a city set on the only level ground around and pushes up to the eastern bluffs of the valley until the angle and height allows no other dwelling to be built. In the hills beyond the town there are cuts in the terrain called coulees where valleys, sometimes tight and vertical and other times gentle and rolling, have been carved into the land by the effects of water and time. Roads snake through these valleys and cling to their sides as they wind into the city below. Snowy days mean that travel will be slow and as morning prayers give way to the Liturgy one can tell people are arriving even if your back is to them by the sound of the door and the stamping of snowy shoes. When you live in the hills you arrive exactly when nature allows.

But the turnout is good for such a day and the faces are familiar. In a small parish no one is ever lost for long. If you crave the anonymity of slipping into the back row of a large and darkened cathedral you will not find it here. So, too, is the assurance that people are here because they want to be, especially when the snow is thick and full.

This old parish has been around for some time by local standards. There were a lot of lean times and decades when Priests came by only now and then to celebrate a wedding, bury the dead, or serve the Liturgy for the sons and daughters of the immigrants who founded the church. Lacking the money and importance that comes with a big city the church spent most of the last century drifting here and there. And the grandchildren, with no certain parish, drifted away to wherever lost generations go and we see them now only at funerals.

At times it seems like we're a clutch of birds huddled against the cold wind or the last remnants of a heroic regiment marching in a parade with tattered uniforms and old medals we bring out for the occasion. But not today. Because somewhere inside of us there must be some ember still burning, a smoldering wick, some flickering light that keeps us coming to this place on a day when lesser folk look out their window, roll over, and go back to sleep.

And as long as there is, it still matters.