Honoring the Seasons

As the calendar and the natural world signal the start of spring, I find myself thinking about the dissonance I often feel between the external season and the season in my body and soul. In a society that seems to demand constant summer, I find my personal system clinging to winter, in a word (that I gleaned from Katherine May’s book titled with the same word): “wintering”.

cover (and link) toWintering, by Katherine May, a highly recommended read!

After years of trying to keep myself afloat in a career in which I have tried to give to others what I have not yet given myself and which I have slowly realized is not a good fit for me, I feel justifiably burnt out and yet embarrassed at times to acknowledge it for the fear of being labeled as incompetent, unstable, or lazy. As I’ve learned—out of necessity—to listen to and honor the rhythms of my own body, which are not always in sync with the seasons of nature due to my history of what I’ll call ‘over-summering’, I’ve found the idea of “wintering” a gracious one that helps me accept where I am as what it is: a season.

When thinking of wintering, I recall the wisdom I gleaned somewhere along my journey about the significance of the Celtic Tree of Life symbol with its roots as deep as the branches are high, and the importance of winter as a season to slowly deepen roots and store nutrients for future above-ground growth. I have also often thought of the phase change diagram from high school chemistry class, showing that growth/progress can happen in multiple dimensions, that what might look like stagnancy when measuring temperature can be clearly observed as a phase change.

So, for anyone else who is feeling less than ‘springy’ and wishing for yet another 6 (or more) weeks of winter in your soul, here’s your permission slip to be gentle with yourself, to allow your body/mind to collect whatever nourishment it needs, and a reminder that this is just another season, one that will produce its own form of growth and that, too, shall pass.

I would have liked to have shared a personal recording of Pete Seeger’s poignant song “To Everything There is A Season”, but since my body seems to have other priorities right now and one of my favorite artists, Emily Elbert, has a beautiful recording (powerfully combined with Dylan’s “The Times They Are A’-Changin’” and “We Shall Overcome”), I hope you’ll be uplifted as I was by her rendition: