Parker J. Palmer says winters will drive you crazy until you learn to get out into them.
WINTER GIFTS. “Winter in
the Upper Midwest is a demanding season—and not everyone appreciates the
discipline. It is a season when death’s victory can seem supreme: few creatures
stir, plants do not visibly grow, and nature feels like our enemy. And
yet the rigors of winter, like the diminishments of autumn, are accompanied by
amazing gifts.”
DEEP REST. “One gift is
beauty. I am not sure that any sight or sound on earth is as exquisite as
the hushed descent of a sky full of snow. Another gift is the reminder
that times of dormancy and deep rest are essential to all living things.”
UTTER CLARITY.
“But for me, winter has an even greater gift to give. It is the gift of
utter clarity. In winter, one can walk into the woods that had been
opaque with summer growth only a few months earlier and see the trees clearly,
singly and together, and see the ground they are rooted in. Winter clears
the landscape, however brutally, giving us a chance to see ourselves and each
other more clearly, to see the very ground of our being.”
GET OUT MORE.
“Our outward winters take many forms—failure, betrayal, depression,
death. But every one of them…yields to the same advice: ‘The winters will
drive you crazy until you learn to get out into them.’ Until we enter
boldly into the fears we most want to avoid, those fears will dominate our
lives.”
TRUSTWORTHY. “But when we
walk directly into them—protected from frostbite by the warm garb of friendship
and inner discipline or spiritual guidance—we can learn what they have to teach
us. Then we discover once again that the cycle of the seasons is
trustworthy and life-giving, even in the most dismaying season of all.”
From Let Your
Life Speak by Parker Palmer, Jossey-Bass, 2000.
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