As winter approaches we wonder if it’s going to be a bad one. Not bad as in naughty but severe and harsh as in take you out into the freezing cold and lay bare your bones to the darkness.
Coldness clouds breath, seeds sleep, bare branches scratch the sky, ice sparkles.
The deep mystery of the dark can terrify the mind yet spark the imagination as inner light illuminates the edges of a cavernous void.
Whilst everything above is dead and sleeping, deep within the earth the seeds are being stratified by the frost in order that they will germinate and burst forth in the spring. Just as our dreams and schemes for next year are quietly gestating in the stillness of the deep wintertime.
We wonder if we can and will survive as we incubate and hibernate, searching our inner resources for the source of our life.
Deep within flow the waters of life, they plunge and roar, freeze and thaw, stagnate and drip but will eventually find their level and return to the ocean when our lives conclude.
This is a core fear, the fear of death and what lies behind and beyond it. The fear of rising bills to pay for heating and a slashed winter fuel allowance for those in the winter of their lives, the very fear of survival.
Yet in the cycle of the seasons Winter is a season that invites us to deeply rest and restore ourselves, to drink at the well of replenishment. To rest our nervous systems just when we are perhaps most stressed is a challenge for many of us in this modern culture’s insistence on business as usual whatever the weather.
Can we choose to see the fear for what it is and decide to live anyway?
Wishing you a deeply restorative winter’s rest while the inner light sustains you.