The morning air was cold enough that the warm vapors of our breath appeared thick as smoke. And the crunch of our feet on the snowpack was the only sound that we heard all morning. It appeared the whole of creation lay in hibernation as our family hiked out towards the wilderness area at camp. As we walked across the footbridge at camp that acts as the wilderness gateway, my daughter stopped us and pointed upstream, “Wow, you couldn’t see that far into the forest this summer when we did our nature hikes at camp.”
We turned and faced the direction in which she was pointing and realized that it was true. We could see much deeper into the forest now that the deciduous trees had dropped their leaves, and the understory brush was buried in snow. Deer trails that had been hidden in the thick foliage of summer were now highly visible. We could see the bobcat tracks that were alighted on the frozen stream. The snow-covered landscape amplified the quiet. What was once hidden in summer’s lush foliage now had given way to winter’s emergence. Only then did it dawn on me, that my daughter’s statement held a deeper meaning.
The eco-blueprint encrypted within God’s creation comes full circle with the cold, dark, dreary season of winter. At the winter solstice, the earth begins its long journey towards light. In the life of creation, it is midnight. The activity of summer has given way to the stillness of postponed activity. In that stillness and solitude, we rediscover what it means to be contemplative and to explore not only the dark nights of winter but also the deepness within our souls.
The stillness of the season that we experience does not equate with death. For nothing is dead, only dormant. A wintering time is one of germination, a process of growth and transformation that we are unable to see with our own eyes. Yet deep within the soil, life is beginning the process of reactivating. We miss the point if we do not recognize that it is also a season for spiritual germination too as we deepen our prayer and meditative life in Christ. One way to do that is to seek a spiritual director to help integrate all aspects of one’s life and take stock of our discipleship. This is where we learn resiliency, not by being tested physically (although that does not hurt) rather by being tested spiritually. Why else do we say, “I’m experiencing a winter season in my life.”
This is a season where we see our breath. The word breath in both Hebrew (ruah) and Greek (pneuma) also means wind and spirit. For many of us, we look back at the winters of our lives and we realize that is where we felt the presence of the Spirit. Those were the thin spaces where the Spirit breathed life back into us. Those were the moments when we realized that we were not dead, only in a state of dormancy where something new was germinating deep within us and we just could not see it. It was in the winter where it was quiet enough to amplify the still, small Voice. It was in the dark, dreary season where a way opened that we could not see in the lush summer of our lives.
It is all too easy to lose sight of the eco-blueprint found within wintertime and give into the shadow form of the season (depression, dismay, loneliness). When that happens, take a moment and step outside, and exhale those feelings into the cold air, and as you see your breath, remember that this is a time for seeing the Spirit alive and active in our lives.
(Originally published in Messenger magazine, December 2021)
