There are two kinds of people in the world: Those who love winter and those who dread it. Many of us, including me, grumble about the wind, the cold, and the snow.
Winter certainly reminds us that we do not have any control over the weather. What will be will be. I have been pretty stressed this winter, carefully watching snow predictions because we always want the parking lot here to be safe for our use. Most of the snowfall happens right before or on Sunday.
Now, I will admit that I love the surprise of new snowfall, especially when I am inside looking through the window. I particularly love the snow in the trees — when it resembles confectioner sugar sprinkled across the branches.
Winter comes, taking a bite out of fall, leaving us all huddled and closer together. Winter is the time of patient waiting and silent growth.
The earth has its own deep freeze business that keeps life resting until the spring thaw and the end of icy winds. Winter can be a time of withdrawal, a time of isolation. The entire earth turns inward, plants retreat into the ground, and certain animals hibernate. On the surface, it would seem that during this time of dormancy, nothing is happening. Everything is still. But if we examine the great cycle of nature, we know this simply isn’t true. The earth might appear still, but it is far from dormant.
Winter is the time when the earth pulls together all its mineral, biological, and chemical resources far below the surface we perceive as ‘dead’ and prepares for its rebirth. Even animals in their months-long slumber are rejuvenating their bodies at an astonishing pace. Movement and change are everywhere — we just can’t see it.
Plants and animals don’t fight the winter; they don’t pretend it’s not happening and try to live like they do in the summer. They prepare. They adapt. They perform extraordinary acts of metamorphosis to get them through.
Winter is a time for personal overhaul. Long nights give us time to reflect on our strengths and difficulties, our assets and liabilities. It’s a time for reflection and recuperation, for slow replenishment, for putting our house in order.
Winter is our maker of new beginnings and our season of ends. It is our time in between, to ready ourselves for April’s misty mornings and daffodil miracles. If we use this time well, spring will truly be a new beginning for us.
As the earth rests and prepares for glorious new life and growth in the spring, we should do the same thing. Our busy lives often prevent us from really taking the time to slow down and listen and reflect and think and take stock of our lives. It’s also a great opportunity to listen to God. Winter provides a natural time for rest and reflection, letting our spare time expand, and allowing for spiritual rest as well. Just as the earth rests under a blanket of snow, we can use this season to rest.
One of my favorite Bible verses is found in Mark:
“Then Jesus said, ‘Let’s go off by ourselves to a quiet place and rest awhile.’ He said this because there were so many people coming and going that Jesus and his apostles didn’t even have time to eat.”
Jesus recognized the need for rest, urging his disciples to step away from their busyness. Winter can be a time to heed this call, finding quiet moments to rejuvenate and recharge.
When we are stuck inside all day, we might need to resist the temptation to keep busy and just rest. Read, write, journal, give ourselves time and space to just be. We don’t have time to do that when we are outside tending our yards. I figure that if my yard is resting, I should rest also. This is the season for all of us to slow down.
The message of winter is to become quiet. We should keep our attention focused inward and stay mindful of the enormous amount of healing activity and reorganization that is happening just beyond the level we can see.
Winter carries with it a stillness, a slower pace. There can be a peaceful tranquility of winter that we just don’t associate with the other three seasons.
In an article entitled The Slow, Healing Work of Winter, Jennifer Dukes Lee writes about her first job growing up in a rural community. She joined several other kids to pick rocks for a farmer. They’d sit on a flatbed trailer behind a tractor while the driver drove through the fields.
When they saw a rock, they would hop off, grab it, and toss it into the trailer. They covered miles a day, cleaning up the fields. The next year, they would return, picking rocks in the same fields, because new stones always emerged. Rocks are a nuisance that must be dealt with because if left in the fields, they can harm farming equipment.
If you are like me, right now you might be wondering how rocks keep emerging. Well, apparently, stones are heaved forth in the frost/thaw cycle of the earth. A farmer has said, this is the winter’s way of healing the land. The land can’t heal without winter.
Maybe the same is true of us. We all need the winter to heal us — and to unearth the rock-like burdens we carry. Winter offers us time to examine those burdens, losses, or concerns. We might use our time to pray for guidance and to make improvement plans.
Some of us would love to avoid the winter season. We might rather continuously move through spring, summer, and fall — enjoying the growth and joy those seasons bring. But there is that fourth season — the winter of our discontent — that we must get through.
If a field needs winter to heal, people do, too. Winter seasons compel us to slow down, reject, and pick through some of the rocks we carry, confront, and allow some of our losses to heal.
Then we can look forward to climbing out of our winter rest — out of hibernation, out of our cocoon —out of our cave — transformed and renewed as we join the earth waking up to a new season of growth.
The rosebud emerges in the spring because of the work that takes place in the winter. Just because we didn’t see it doesn't mean it didn’t happen.
Robert Bitzer writes:
“Winter is more important than spring. It is in the dormancy of winter that impending life is pulled together, organized, and focused. Spring is the acknowledgment in nature that the silent work of winter was effective. Spring comes because of what took place in winter.”
Let’s use this winter season wisely, my friends. Let’s take a winter rest. Amen.
Comentarios