Wintering

As dark began to take on the most dominant part of the day, and the temperatures cooled into the season, I began to think about Winter and it’s rhythmic need, even as solstice leans into light. While I live in California now, whose grievances of Winter are either complaints about rain, grey clouds, or a lack of White Christmases, I grew up in the Midwest and am no stranger to the cold, ice and snow or the pain of inescapable numbing temps or the occasional arctic blast. And growing up in that context I hated the cold. I found nothing romantic about it, save the occasional snow storm big enough to bring most non-essential activity to a freezing halt, a forced blanket of hibernation. Everything iced, which was a strange freedom to sit and “do nothing.” .

But in the grind of what I hated, or in the extreme of that “doing nothing” , something emerged more balanced in need. In the winters of your life, no matter how they arise, there is a necessity and an opportunity to reach deep and go inward and to do the work of the unseen until you can emerge again. Just as most deciduous trees, are winter worn, de-leaved, stripped bare and dormant, casting their fractal silhouettes against the icy sky, so too, beneath the ground, their roots remain active, seeking the extra moisture, building a stronger anchor to survive life’s storms. So too for us, Winter can be a time to go inward and to invest our energies in the depths of the Ground. And once Spring comes again perhaps we’ll find ourselves more ready to face the storms of the next seasons. So long as the ground isn’t frozen, there’s room for growth in Wintering.