Awakenings

This morning I took my son to the school bus stop in the early hours, it was just as the sky was lightening, and the clouds were glowing pale pink, but they revealed the moon still shining dutifully. The street was dark, for the lamps had extinguished themselves in anticipation of the coming light, and the houses had smoke billowing from their chimneys and it was just a little foggy and almost entirely quiet, and so I stopped to take it all in. I could hear the rainwater running in the storm drain, and then a bird cawed and a dog barked...and for one fleeting moment I closed my eyes and listened while nature did it's thing. No idea where it came from, it hit me so hard it made me suck in my breath and get teary eyed, and the naked trees even seemed patient and wistful rather than mourning.

There is something precious about winter. The bulbs peeking out of the dirt just now, the realization that the green we enjoy in the summer is a result of winter downpours. An anticipation of the birth of new things to come. If I only venture a peek in the right direction, front and center is the majestic mountain, white down into the foothills and glimmering in the low afternoon sun as it stretches out to greet the universe.

There is something gentle about the darkness. The lights down our street, barely breaking the pitch of the night, seeming both intimate and inviting. They illumine the winter, while the fire in my hearth crackles, and I am able to breath the aroma of woodsmoke and it opens the pores of my spirit.

There is something worshipful about winter. It is so quiet, so deeply cold, it brings out a sense of thankfulness for homes to burrow into. When I stare out off our deck at the forests of pine, I see something that isn't there, some perception in me that is underused and many millenia dormant and I feel in my heart the tug of a desire to inhale the wild and hold it inside me.

There is something deeply introspective about winter. Something that allows us, if we only reach to feel it, to turn inside ourselves and root out that which isn't useful. It provides peace for the things we do not understand about our souls and answers for the darkness in them.

It has been unfolding, slowly, in ways I had not noticed before. For so long I have railed against this season that I now wonder if I have only been so adamantly opposed to it out of habit. The winter solstice touches me deeply, and I used to fear this feeling. This year I embraced it, just a little, tentative. For my entire existence, it has been insisted to me that the celebration of solstice is a pagan rite, and one must not even tread the edges of it. On Friday, it was said to me that this is much more a Celtic notion than a pagan one, though at times in history the two were intertwined, one does not define the other. That's good enough for me to feel safe and permitted, for Celts reside in ancient places of my soul, and so I belong.

This year, I briefly stood out in the night, anticipating the coming daylight that would bring an extra moment with it. It was snowing that night; abundant ambient light reflected off the snow. The air chilled my lungs on the way in and I was thankful to God for the wisdom to create a balanced year of beauty, each season in it's own unique way.

Maybe it is just part of aging...for so many years, we live in the summery youth of life where we like to frolic and play carelessly, but as we age and we begin to appreciate the slower, darker, more thoughtful pace of winter. If we only let ourselves ingest the winter and use it to close up from the glare of life, like an anemone, I think some healing happens that we don't have time for in the summer months.

Then, maybe, there isn't only one way to be. Some people might be summery in the love and laughter that defines them, for they bring us light. Others might be positively winterine in their melancholy and introspection, but they bring and the peace and quiet ear of the darkness. Is one more desirable than the other? Tonight, I'm not so sure.



Fallen: Part I
Amateur Therapy Hour
She's Like the Wind
Awakenings
Fallen II: Shit Makes Things Grow
The Saturnine Cycle
Light in the Windows