Winter

A lovely book called The Circle of Life by Joyce Rupp and Macrina Wiederkehr includes this paragraph in its introduction: "The seasons invite us to honor the earth out of which new life germinates, sprouts, develops, blooms, blossoms, and grows. Listen to Earth's song of the seasons passing through her sacred body. Listen intently to these seasons for they reveal our story of unfolding growth as well. They are reflective of changes in our life. In nature's pages we can read of our own evolving passages from death to life. They repeat themselves over and over as we become more true, more whole, more free with each seasonal turning."

This beautiful book has helped me to realize that tuning into the seasons will connect me more deeply to my own cycles of dying to the old/being reborn to the new, resting/growing, reflecting/doing or creating/destroying. Realizing that each new season holds it own challenges yet its own beauties has helped me to be more patient with the cycles that constantly wax and wane in my own life.


Today is the first day of winter, December 21. As I do at the beginning of each new season, today I reflect on winter. The first thing that came to me as I reflected were childhood winter memories. In most of my memories, I was totally oblivious to the hardships of winter. . . I was only focused on the adventures of trekking through deep snow, ice-skating with friends late into the long winter evenings, sledding down to the car on the mornings after my dad was unable to get all the way up the hill to our mountain home and snow days spent with my grandmother. Then with further reflection, I realized that in my early adult years, I lost that sense of wonder with winter and began to dislike it. . . the cold was too cold, the snow too heavy to shovel, the snow-covered roads too difficult to maneuver upon, the days too short, dark and bleak.


We all have spiritual winters in our lives. . . times when cold doubts and/or fears seem to blanket us and send us deep inside ourselves in search of our connections to Source. We miss the rich, full seasons of growth and the bountiful days of harvest. . .seasons of winter can be difficult to maneuver our way through. But just as in my perceptions of winter as a child, spiritual winters can also be times of adventure and beauty. Just as the earth needs winter as a time to rest and replenish to get ready for another big growth spurt in the spring, so the human spirit needs times of stillness, solitude and going deep within.


Today, as we enter the season of winter, I invite you to dwell, not on the harshness, the cold or the difficulties of winter. Instead, I invite you to see the long dark evenings as invitations to be still; to go within and search deep within yourself for forgotten or never explored aspects of your soul. Take this time to reconnect with your Source of wisdom and strength so that you will be refreshed and ready for a new explosion of growth when the season of spring comes once more. See this time of digging out from under old fears and doubts as getting ready for rebirth and new life in the spring.