Winter is not the inconvenience. Winter's temperatures and call for slowing down, going within and taking good care to tread with mindfulness upon ice and snow are only physical and spiritual calls for us to change our pace.
This is a pace we often cannot sustain within the frenzy of stress, work and family and so we turn with a vengeance on winter, who quietly keeps insisting that our internal chaos is a personal season of disengagement from self often magnified when the ease of movement and warmth of temperature slip away.
So, I challenge all of you to try to see this time less as an exhausting pilgrimage of wrangling toddlers in to snow suits, scraping car windows, lamenting horrible commutes- these are realities we have constructed. Winter only asks for space to be, to let the earth rest, to ask us to rest. Without winter, spring would not descend upon us with such vibrant and deeply sensory joy! We would not know the true brilliance of sunshine and birdsong and green growth.
When you breathe in the white quiet, watch the snow fall, play in the yard with children whose giggles tumble over each other to the point you are smiling, when you take one more breath for patience with those struggling to adjust due to differing abilities to be in this time or shovel the walkway of another's home- you are accessing the full beauty of this season. And, like all seasons, it and its memories pass.
Try to find the blessing winter brings. It's there, quiet and still, far away from the human-made madness. It is there in the snowbanks, young ones' delight, the hot soup and chocolate and the slowing down. It is there as we lend a hand to a young parent with no help and little ones to get somewhere or a stranded neighbor whose car skidded out and needs to be pushed back on the road. Find the beauty.
Written by Heather Kamia
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