08 Dec Winter’s Gifts

Winter come rest your soul on autumn’s weary head,

Twirl, shimmer, soften before tucking fall to bed.’

Angie Weiland-Crosby

Take time to nurture…

Winter’s gifts

Winter was a long time coming this year. As ever, I found myself clinging to the last lingering days of summer and dreading the inevitable turn in the year. It’s only when it finally comes that I remember what I love about it. This season has its own kindnesses to curl into.

Modern life can often feel like a constant summer, and a forever daytime – with our city lights on all night through and the constant vigour of doing and deadlines, of ‘in demand’ and ‘on demand’ every moment of every day. 

With winter comes permission to replenish body and mind – if we listen to its ancient prerogative. Action, distraction and excess falls away and we must rely on what we have stored up to feed us through the dark, dreaming months.

 

We see the lie of the land, the curves and contours; the architecture of trees once hidden by an embroidery of green.

It begins with Halloween, but the otherworldliness goes on into the deep midwinter. Some days the sky quilts over; on others the angled light teases out new dimensions, like a pathway tunnelling through the witchy forest into fairytale and memory.

When I think of those shortest days around Christmas time my abiding association is of light, shining low through an arching temple of trees; elements revealed in their strength: still water, rock. 

Winter prepares the earth for spring: it rests the ground, but underneath, in the mothering dark, seeds of future growth gestate. In the same way we can let our minds loose, give ourselves space and peace, ask less of ourselves and in this way replenish our inner reserves.

The long nights suggest we go to bed earlier, get up later. The quiet ground suggests we forage or farm less, and something very old in us remembers the wisdom of this principle. Nature’s rhythm is always one of striving and then resting; winter is the pause between heartbeats, the dreaming sleep that sifts for deeper meaning. 

‘Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience’.

Ralph Waldo Emerson