a sacred time of rest and reflection

I have always loved the winter, in fact, more than the warm abundant months. I sleep with the window cracked open so that I hear the quiet...maybe a rustling tree branch, an occasional bird call or the distant laughter of a child playing outside. Covered in snow, January still offers up little surprises such as tiny bird tracks, red berries covered in ice and reflections on frosty windows.  

These early and middle days of winter remind us of the beauty of contrasts. It is the warm sun on your face on a frigid day. It is the hard ice on which Spring will skate its arrival. Against the cold, outside, we have layers of wool with a mug of hot cocoa, or inside, there are blankets and a cup of tea. While our culture asks us to focus on how often we are doing things and saying things, winter reminds us of the value of rest and silence. During these cold days, it seems a natural contrast to have the brightest apparition: sunlight reflecting off a landscape of ice. But the power and beauty of winter is deeper than its surface contrasts. 

Winter isn’t special because it is the opposite of summer. Winter is special unto itself. There is something in the quiet dark hum of silence that flows through this season. During a snowfall, I go outside by myself under the large white pine trees behind the house just to hear the tiny sounds of snow flittering through the branches. Sometimes, I sit down in the snow, with my back pressed up against the trunk, looking upward into the patterns created by the soft dots of snowflakes among the sharp needles, discovering happenstance compositions and color.  

With the open space and quiet, our senses are more active, and what we sense hits us more sharply: ice frozen into droplets on trees, the sparkles within the sparkles of snowflakes on a hill of snow, fractals in a frozen puddle.  

And this power is everywhere. Even when I am on a winter beach (I prefer the beach at winter), I feel it. The winter sun casts its long shadows on the cool sand, undisturbed by footprints save my own. The ocean feels heavier on the horizon. Without people and gulls, the symphony of the waves is easier to hear, and whole shells have been washed ashore like diamonds on velvet, out in the open for collecting. 

Winter can feel harsh and unforgiving yet we, like the seasons, need the rest, the downtime, the time to pause and renew. Here, in the northern hemisphere, winter brings the long singular journeys of migration, and its opposite, the long inward journeys of hibernation. Trees fall dormant. Night arrives early. Acorns and pine cones in the soil wait for the first hint of warmth. This time is about inward focus, embracing an inner strength while holding the darkness as comfort. We can spend time alone to contemplate, to be reminded of the blessings in our life, to anticipate the emergence of spring. This is a sacred time of rest and reflection. All life must, in some way, winter.