Winter Calling....
“What if birth is not a beginning, and death is not an ending?” ---Mother Teresa
Moving back to the east coast of the US during the winter would be tantamount to insanity to some. It is “a long and winding road” story that led me to move to the Hudson Valley in NY at this time of year, after 20 years of living in Los Angeles.
When you have lived with the cycle of the turn of the seasons solidified in your consciousness from childhood, it is a very hard thing to then live without them. At least it was for me. The endless summer of LA branded me with it’s own form of melancholia. Just as someone cannot be smiling all the time, the stillness of winter must inevitably come to balance out the scales of summer.. “There is a season, turn, turn, turn”…without an end there can be no beginning, again. It is seeing life spontaneously emerge in the spring that entices us to feel the continuum that our own individual lives cling to, whether we know it or not.
Winter might appear brutal at first glance, but it beckons us to learn to not fear the loss of control or the inevitability of change and transformation. It is a time for rest and restoration. The days are short, the light is limited. This naturally pushes us toward a period of hibernation, as the bears and other animals are known to do at this time of year. There is a sparseness, and a thinning out, that starts to occur as winter sets in. The veil between realities shifts with the change in the whiteness of winter light and the invigoration of the cold that smacks us awake in a not so subtle way. This is a metaphor for our lives if we choose to accept it, and see ourselves within a greater context.
Today I saw a young fawn discovering something to eat under the snow, standing next to the near-frozen pond that is the highlight of my “backyard”. I know there are fish in there still, in suspended animation until the thaw comes. Ravens, in groups of 3, are starting to come around more, and rest in the bare trees. There is eternally life on some level, even if hidden or obscured, or in transition.
For me the change of the seasons is the balance that I know I can rest my life within, an infinitely but slowly turning wheel that has no beginning or end, but is a perpetual circle that I can find safety, comfort and deep solace from. This is not an intellectual idea but something much more basic, perhaps primal or cellular, that my being can still respond to, no matter the avalanche of things that distract me from that ancient bond.
We humans could find much solace in these relationships that we’ve been so separated from as modern culture reaches forever forward without regard for how much continuity we might leave behind. If we can “remember” the balance that our own individual existences reside within, we might not feel so distracted, detached and honestly deranged at times. If we cling to nothing larger than ourselves, we often lose our way. I am not talking about religion, or even spirituality, but about our basic nature that we have mostly sadly forgotten. Yes, we have intellect which we believe separates (and elevates) us above the rest of the animal kingdom, but do we need to concentrate on that, and only that, to the exclusion of any other characteristics that keeps us in balance with the rest of the planet, and with ourselves too?
The amount of anxiety that riddles modern culture is not separate from this existential crisis - they are in fact related. Man was not meant to feel himself above and beyond the animal kingdom and the larger cycles we are all inherently part of, but to find balance within them and from them. If we can forge a path for ourselves back to a visceral relationship to the greater turns of our world, we might have a better chance to hang in a balance that alleviates our anxieties - we are indeed a part of something greater than ourselves, we just need to “re-member”.
The word “remember” conjures an image for me of something that has been separated and needs to be connected again--parts that no longer go together, but can find find their way back to one another. Not like re-animating exactly, but a putting-back-together of something lost, but still able to be found. This is not the traditional dictionary meaning of the word, but for me re-membering requires a different kind of intelligence, perhaps one that is more passive than active. To be with the change of seasons helps us to remember a balance that we are still inextricably entwined with. As much as we may try to overcome that, so we are not constrained by the aspects of a season like winter, which slows us down, confines and confounds us with the cold, the dark, and the end of the life cycle. The beauty of the winter that we may lose sight of though is what unparalleled gifts we might glean from understanding it as a metaphor for the turn of the cosmic wheel that is the cycle of our own existence too. There can be no light without dark, or day without night, or sun without moon, or summer without winter, nor can there be birth without death. We do well for ourselves when we can remember this.
