I am writing this on a cold and snowy January afternoon, hunkered down in my home office, feeling the icy chill of winter in my fingers as I type. Winter in Pittsburgh is difficult for me. My heart, body, and soul long for sun, warmth, and the sense of renewal and rebirth that spring brings. Yet, I know I cannot get to spring without journeying through winter.
What can these slow, sometimes dreary, and frosty days of winter teach us human beings? What wisdom can we receive from the indispensable hibernation patterns of brown bears, chipmunks, bumble bees, and marmots? What can we learn from the inclination of trees, flowers, and herbs to willingly let go and embrace a season of repose, stillness, and dormancy? What do our creational siblings teach us about interdependence, connectedness, and limitations?
In her book Wintering, Katherine May puts it this way:
“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 that they lived in the summer. They prepare. They adapt. They perform extraordinary acts of metamorphosis to get them through. Winter is a time of withdrawing from the world, maximizing scant resources, carrying out acts of brutal efficiency and vanishing from sight; but that’s where the transformation occurs. Winter is not the death of the life cycle, but its crucible.”
Winter is a time of withdrawing from the world…where the transformation occurs, a crucible! I do not know how you experience these winter months, but could you receive it as an invitation to honor your human limitations, slow down, snuggle up, take a long-loving look at what is most real about your own life, this world, and our life together as a church—even if it is painful and hard?
Ash Wednesday is in the heart of winter this year, February 14; a day when we contemplate our own mortality, that we are beloved dust, enlivened by God’s breath and to dust we will return. How might the season of winter help us to prepare to show up to the beginning of Lent as authentically and genuinely as possible? How might the frozen, fallow, resting ground of winter help us to journey with Jesus with openness, strength, and expectation?
As we journey through these often long winter days, may we be reminded of the wintering words of the prophet Isaiah, “…in returning and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength” (30:15).
—Pastor BJ