Though the sun is but a promise in the eastern sky, its early light dances across the lake's wind~roughened ice, leaps over rocks, twirls in crevasses, and casts shades of blue limned with silver as it goes. At the lake's far edge, I circle back toward home. Mountains arc before me on three sides, tall, regal, snow~covered. I sing their names in greeting as I do each morning, even when dense clouds or moisture hide them from view. I have walked this path for decades now, in every season and all kinds of weather, wearing capris and tank tops, layers of sweats, gortex against the wet. In today's clear, per~dawn chill, the sweats have it.
In her new book Wintering, Katherine May explores winter as season, state of mind, and phase of life. Though coming to us unbidden, each can be accepted, even welcomed for the gifts they bring. May writes that in the natural world, "plants and animals don't fight the winter; they don't pretend it's not happening and attempt to carry on living the same lives they lived in the summer. They prepare. They adapt." It is by "carrying out acts of brutal efficiency and vanishing from sight...(that) transformation occurs. Winter is not the death of the life cycle, but it's crucible."
In an interview with Krista Tippett, May describes wintering as a metaphor for those times of life when we feel out in the cold, stuck, or without the energy needed to move forward. And yet even in this pandemic year, which Tippett describes as "one big extended communal experience of wintering," amid all the heartache and fear, limitations and isolation, an opportunity has been offered. In May's words, wintering is "a time for reflection and recuperation, for slow replenishment, for putting your house in order...letting your spare time expand, getting enough sleep, resting."
Glennon Doyle, author of Untamed, writes that in her own wintering time, she stilled herself enough to sink "beneath the noise of the pounding, swirling surf" to a place "where all is quiet and clear." It was in this underneath place that she learned to access "the Knowing (that) feels like warm liquid gold filling my veins and solidifying just enough to make me feel steady, certain." For Doyle, "God lives in this deepness inside me," though she is equally comfortable naming it intuition, deepest self, or source.
Whatever we call it, wintering episodes are ideal times to fall into stillness. When all is dark and cold, when pandemic woes impose solitude, when we can't find the energy to carry on as usual, this deep place endures. And if we turn toward it, as I do my mountains from the far edge of the lake, we will find welcome. And if we sing its name~~whatever name it gives us to sing~~we just might hear our own name sung in return.
Winters can be hard, no question. Yet if we don't fight them, if we accept the rest, stillness, and sustenance such crucibles offer, we might find ourselves made new and with a shape more fully our own when Spring arrives.
Winters don't last forever. Days lengthen, vaccines arrive, new administrations take office, another cycle begins. For eons, humans have honored this transition from deep winter toward the greening soon to come. This past week brought us Imbolc from the Celtic calendar, and Candlemas and The Feast of the Presentation of Jesus to the Temple from the Christian. And let's not forget Groundhog Day. Whether religious, secular, or some combination of the two, each rejoices in the increased Light as we arrive at the halfway point between Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox.
Our wintering will soon draw to a close. May we use the time remaining to sink down into that which is eternal, that which remains no matter the season, outer or inner, that is upon us. And as we do so, let us also send Love to those we have lost and those who have toiled ceaselessly for us all during this, our communal wintering.
In Love,
Leia
For Tippett's interview with Katherine May, click here.
And for an essay on the seasonal celebrations of the past week, click here.
