Winter is here and the wide world grows smaller as I huddle into the safe sanctuary of my sweet home, my little nest. Here I live in a round ruby-colored haven, a jewel set in a meadow of green. Winter has not yet ensconced us in terminal grey, warmer days than usual and even sun have greeted us. The tall trees that stand around my home are reaching upward. As I sit, right outside my window, hemlock is waving her soft fringed branches in the breeze, sunlight pouring down on her.
The sun is setting at 4:30, and I am indoors so much more this time of year. There’s a sweetness to this, life feels very small and contained. Not in a rigid way, but in a way of gentleness, of tending hearth and home. Both on the physical plane, and on the inner plane, the realm of soul. This is a time of turning inward, looking into the dark places inside myself, making peace, and making space for new blossoming to come when the time is right.
I’m acutely aware of how busy my life is, how often I am pushing and striving, how I fill my time with social visits, work, even the garden which takes so much care. Seems I always have something I “must do.” I’m choosing to set that down for a while, choosing to get still, and small, and quiet. My perception of the demands of the world will always be there, there will always be something I must do, and I am the only one who can relieve myself of that burden. And I’m not saying that’s an easy thing! These patterns are so ingrained that creating pockets of stillness feels challenging, creates unease in my belly, and I even feel fear arise.
I look back over the years of my adulthood and I think I’ve missed many opportunities to take winter deeply in. This time of year gives us a chance to slow down, but we have to be willing to take that chance, to set things down, to choose to embrace the fertile darkness and the inner time. I know this, and I feel it to be so true, but I tend to get stuck filling long dark evenings with television or scrolling on the Internet. But there is an opportunity here to deepen into my own heart, to make beauty with my hands, and to have more time where I’m doing absolutely nothing. But I have to choose this. I have to be the one to put down the remote, or maybe even unplug the television for a while. To bridge the moments of uncomfortable stillness and trust this intuition that stillness and quiet are so necessary.
Just now there are two towhees on the ground outside my window, their tails held high, they bow and dip, digging in the earth for some delightful morsel to eat, they lift their heads and look about,. make contact with their companion and go about their work. How right they are in the world, how totally themselves. How would it feel to have freedom like that? Freedom to eat, fly, and nest, but most of all freedom from the tyranny of the mind that tells me I always have something I must do. How can I break that cycle, and find deep peace and ease in my bones? A recalibration in my nervous system towards stillness? A true setting down of the puritanical work ethic that seems to thrum inside of me all the time pushing me ever forward or chastising me if I refuse to be pushed…. Damned if I do, damned if I don’t.
As usual, I don’t have any solid answers, just more questions and more questions. Yet I do have a sense, a glimmering of possibility, a knowing that it could be another way. And I’m going to choose that, even if it’s unformed and not quite tangible yet. Even if it makes me uncomfortable as hell. Even if I forget, and fall off course, and beat myself up for it. I’m still going to try, I’m going to follow the thread of longing, for still and quiet dark winter nights.
The Christmas tree lights sparkle, I sit and look at this beautiful altar to the Christmas spirit and to light returning. I sip my tea and feel grateful for the safety of my home. The containment of my small world that feels so gentle. My tea is hot and creamy, spicy Chai with just a touch of sweetness. My body is cozy, wrapped in layers and warm slippers. Mac the cat sleeps on the cushion of the chair beside me, pouring out a sense of radiant contentment at the comfort of his body, nestled just so in the softness of the cushion.
It’s all so beautiful, this small and quiet life of mine. So far from the hustle and bustle, the fray of the years of active parenting. Now I only have myself to get ready for the day, and the evenings are luxuriously long. A fact both startling in its beauty, and arresting in fear. What do I do with my wild and precious life when I I’m the one who must make it what I long for it to be? Sovereignty, so beautiful and so terrifying.
For this day, for this season I am going to choose to let myself not know. I am going to choose to be in the liminal space between things. I am not young and I am not old. I am not rich and I am not poor. I am not certain and I am not lost. I am, slowly, so slowly, arriving. Arriving into what? I couldn’t tell you… But something is unfolding inside of me that is mysterious and magnificent. This life that I am weaving, I can’t quite see the warp and the weft forming together into tapestry yet, yet I sense and know that tapestry it will become if I stay the course. Maybe that’s what this winter is about. Maybe this is a winter of weaving, of pattern making, of allowing the colors of the thread to choose me rather than me choosing them. I trust the pattern. I trust the slow growing of cloth. I trust myself. And I trust the darkness.