Not Ready for Spring

Wondering about the need to be "dormant"

[NOTE: I have had a nasty cold this week and was traveling last week, so apologies for the long gap in between posts!]
[ANOTHER NOTE: It could be that this is really two separate reflections, but I'll let you decide.]

Spring is in full swing here in Western North Carolina. Has been for a few weeks, actually. And my apologies in advance to those of you who may live in colder climes and are truly ready for some relief from a winter that always seems to go on too long… But I'm just not ready for spring right now. How can that be? some may wonder. Aren't we always sort of primed to be ready for spring after winter? Often that has been the case for me. For the 30 years we lived in West Virginia, though the winters weren't often cold, they were overcast and grey — and so, too, was my spirit after a few months of that. But here the winter is sporadic, with brief interludes of spring weather thrown in, and many cooler, though cloudless days. It's less SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder). Yet strangely I'm finding that I may need more “greyness,” more days that actually feel like opportunity to be dormant. Or perhaps it's related to this particular year and to a new administration that seems to be — like the Witch in CS Lewis’ The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe — imposing a kind of never-ending winter. How can the weather look like spring when it still feels like midwinter on the inside?

I am decidedly of two minds with regard to winter. On the one hand it is a metaphor for suffering, for all that is harsh and dark and bitter in our world and in our lives. “Winter is coming,” went a tagline for The Game of Thrones in a world threatened by not only human greed and cruelty, but also by the hordes of “White Walkers” — soulless creatures driven only to destroy.

Winter is here, it seems, for those of us for whom empathy is not a weakness, but rather the exact opposite. An extension of suffering for immigrants, for social agencies and their clients, for government workers suddenly out of jobs, for… so many others.

From another perspective, though, winter has its purpose in the larger designs of nature and the world. A time of dormancy, of soil and roots lying fallow, a time of rest for at least some of God's creation. So, too, I guess for me; winter has been a time to “power down” just a bit. To think differently; to “huddle up” with books, ideas, to let things marinate. Yeah, I like that analogy! Often when cooking I wait too long to marinate things and they fail to take on much of the flavor… the whole purpose of marinating! Maybe that's what's going on for me now; I needed more time to marinate…

At the conclusion of a recent committee meeting, the leader asked in prayer for strength for the “difficult season” that we are facing, and the words stuck with me. I suppose it could be observed that there are frequent seasons of our lives that are fraught with difficulty, with suffering, with anguish, with grief. Indeed, for the compassionate among us, watching the governmental dismantling of social welfare programs, along with other agency “guttings,” this feels like a deepening winter.

But there is something about recognizing this time we're facing as a season that helps me; it buoys me to know this not as the permanent condition it feels like in darker moments, but as a temporary thing. Winter can feel like it lasts forever when you are in the midst of it. Solstice festivities of past ages begged for — and then celebrated a shift back toward light. Maybe we need a way to overcome our own fear of the encroaching darkness? A reminder that this is but a season… a difficult one, to be sure, but temporary.

Wendell Berry (my other favorite poet, besides Mary Oliver) wrote (in his book Hannah Coulter), “You think winter will never end, and then, when you don't expect it, when you have almost forgotten it, warmth comes and a different light.” He also has this poem about Spring:

Can I see the buds that are swelling
in the woods on the slopes
on the far side of the valley? I can’t,
of course, nor can I see
the twinleafs and anemones
that are blooming over there
bright-scattered above the dead
leaves. But the swelling buds
and little blossoms make
a new softness in the light
that is visible all the way here.
The trees, the hills that were stark
in the old cold become now
tender, and time changes.
This Day: Collected & New Sabbath Poems

I think I'll conclude by offering a link to an album on YouTube (if you have a streaming service you may want to listen there) to which I listen at least once every year as winter begins to give way to spring. I share it in hopes that we perceive challenges as but seasons in our lives and world — seasons that may require particular responses from us, to be sure, but seasons nonetheless; and in the hope that my/your/our winter may be as long as we need to lie fallow and no longer!

George Winston - “Winter Into Spring” (instrumental album)

Peace, Hope, Love,

Dana