Life seems to have screeched to a halt. We were teased with the January thaw and then enlightened with the arrival of Brigid in February. We all know that this coldness, this ice and snow, this cessation of life cannot last. We know it is just an illusion, but it feels pretty real when you’re out in it.
I think about the “winters” of my own life, and there have
been many in the past with many more to come in the future. But first, what is winter? It’s the coldest time of the year. It’s the end of the year on the
calendar. It’s the time when life
retreats and death rules. It’s a time of
shivering and hibernating. It’s a time
of very little light or warmth. Winter is a trial.
So in terms of my own life, as I said, there have been many
winters. There have been winters in
relationships, either friendships or partners.
Those were very cold winters as the relationship crawled toward its
end. As it retreated and the colors and
the warmth previously felt slowly ebbed away, death loomed on the horizon. Then the shivering occurred, which was
experienced in tears, and the hibernating happened as I hid away in
sorrow. There was very little light or
joy, as I recall, in the winter of my relationships, when I stood on trial.
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| Winter in the rhythm of the Earth. |
There have been winters in some of my business plans, in the
directions I attempted to steer my life.
When the world had other ideas, the coldness of the situation was
shocking. As some of my plans crawled
toward their end, or sometimes careened toward their end, everything I had connected
to those plans had to die. Then the
shivering occurred again and the hibernating too, and I hid away in sorrow once
again. The light was nowhere to be found
when I stood in judgment upon myself.
There have been winters in the opportunities available to
me, and new winters continue on as the years pass.
One day, a window of opportunity permanently closes, never to open
again. The chance is gone; it has ended. Then the shivering starts again, the tears
for opportunities lost and paths that can now never be taken. The world seems a bit smaller with the
closing of each window, and the light is shut out. This is the trial of self-making.
And there are other winters.
There are winters, or “ends” if you will, to everything. There are winters to our physical
abilities. There are winters to social
ties and communities. There are winters
to trips and vacations and visits. There
is a winter at the end of every single day.
Winter is the physical manifestation in our subjective
surroundings of the underworld. Winter
IS the underworld. No, the underworld
was never a place of heat or flames. The
underworld is the end of things. It is
the culmination of the processes of life.
The underworld is the quintessential world of death. It is the absence of the life-giving
properties of the sun. It is the time of
weighing our accomplishments on a scale that has kept track of every debt we ever
owed from our first day on Earth to our last.
There is a secret hidden in the seasons that gracefully pass
us daily. That is the secret of the
seed. You cannot have a winter unless
you have first had a spring, summer, and fall.
So there is joy in that remembrance, in the calling to mind of the
growth, the abundance, and the autumnal splendor of our endeavors, of our lives. That is important to keep in mind and
remember and share, and it’s important to be grateful.
But that’s not the secret.
The secret is the seed itself.
The seed is dormant and for all practical purposes, dead. It dwells in the underworld, hidden in the
darkness in the land of death. Yet
something happens to it as it sits in the Kingdom of Death. At a time of her own reckoning, the Great
Alchemist sends water, the Philosopher's Stone.
Out of nothing, something comes.
Out of the void, everything explodes.
And the world begins again. It is
the rhythm of the seasons that reveals the key.
He with ears, let him hear.
