I read an interesting book by Katherine May recently. It was a memoir of a time of severe health challenges that forced her to “winter” for a while. She used examples from nature to describe the necessity of winters, plus strategies to get through a season of darkness or change. She discovered that there was wisdom and a new life to be found as she faced her winter.
Transformation is the business of winter.
The loose communities that we find in spiritual or religious gatherings were once entirely ordinary to us, but now it seems more radical to join them, a brazen challenge to the strictures of the nuclear family, the tendency to stick within tight friendship groups, the shrinking away from the awe- inspiring. Congregations are elastic, stretching to take in all kinds of people and bringing up unexpected perspectives and insights. We need them now more than ever.
But if happiness is a skill, then sadness is, too. Perhaps through all those years at school, or perhaps through other terrors, we are taught to ignore sadness, to stuff it down into our satchels and pretend it isn’t there. As adults, we often have to learn to hear the clarity of its call. That is wintering. It is the active acceptance of sadness. It is the practice of allowing ourselves to feel it as a need. It is the courage to stare down the worst parts of our experience and to commit to healing them the best we can. Wintering is a moment of intuition, our true needs felt keenly as a knife.
In our winter, a transformation happened. We read and worked and problem- solved and found new solutions. We changed our focus away from pushing through with normal life and towards making a new one. When everything is broken, everything is also up for grabs. That’s the gift of winter: it’s irresistible. Change will happen in its wake, whether we like it or not. We can come out of it wearing a different coat.
Here is another truth about wintering: you’ll find wisdom in your winter, and once it’s over, it’s your responsibility to pass it on. And in return, it’s our responsibility to listen to those who have wintered before us.
All quotes are from Katherine May’s Wintering: the Power of Rest and Retreat during Difficult Times.