When it’s cold there is a need to find warmth. As far as I know most of us want to be warm. But there is cold weather and winter is one of only four seasons. It seems to me there must be an existential reason for cold days. I am speaking here in that “everything happens for a reason” narrative, rather I am saying that winter has become part of human existence. Therefore it must have some kind of purpose for us, otherwise the experience becomes “waiting it out.” While I hesitate to speak of specific incidents as the result of a God who moves the strings while we merely move about as puppets I do believe a Creator gives us human experience with some deeper purpose. What could be the purpose of winter?
I remember first hearing about animals who hibernate, how they move slowly, find shelter and remove themselves from the “action” of their surroundings. I thought to myself, “surely this is what we human do at various times of our lives”, that finding discernment and transformation challenging we can retreat to a quieter, slower and safer place to consider where we go from here. I think winter can be that period in our lives. I recall a very bitter and slippery winter in Halifax, as the Pastoral Care Minister for a downtown church I visited countless seniors that winter. I remember the feeling of deep isolation these seniors felt, they knew that if they ventured out on the sidewalks they risked falling and a fall would likely mean a broken hip and thus a nursing home. However, given that they did not work and were challenged by several medical issues they did not get around like they used to. Being confined to their apartment was like a prison sentence, and yet leaving carried with it tremendous risk.
I listened to a lot of pain and sadness that winter. But one woman shared this reflection with me, “I am using this isolation as a period of reflection on my life, thinking about the totality of my life and what is left and what I shall make of this time.” She smiled as she said these words. I felt she was sharing something very profound with me. Winter can be a time for this very discernment, a time to know just how we shall live out the spring and summer that lays before us. Life lived in the spring and summer that has not come from reflection can be predictable, rote, reacting to what is, just going along. Missed in such a hamster wheel lifestyle are the opportunities that are all around us, the adjustment internally we might make to make way for new life and new discoveries.
Last night my daughter told my wife to wake her at 6 am even though there is no school for her this morning. Why? “I have my best dreams when I get woken up at 6 am and go back to sleep until 8 am.” Her mother asked Lucy what kind of dreams she has in the mornings. “I think about all the things I am going to do, could do, but in a different way.” For me winter does not have to be “waiting it out” or avoided by travelling to Florida or the Caribbean. Winter can be a time of pondering what has unfolded before and what lies ahead and being open to the possibilities that lay ahead, living out our spring and summer with renewed vigor and spirit.
That is how I “shake off my mid-winter blues.”