A Letter to Winter
Dear Winter,
In times past you have heard me complain of all that it is that I detest about you. Each year I have to experience you while trying to ignore you.
You are always something that has to be endured by me.
Each day I check in and see how I am doing. Am I depressed? Am I freezing? Am I sluggish? Am I gaining more weight? Am I craving more comfort food? On and on.
It is me checking in to see if I am alright, if I am making it with my ongoing diminishing vitality.
I am sorry I have spoken so ill of you. Because even though I struggle so much with you, I recognize that you are a part of this glorious world that is my home.
Even though I don’t know how to relate to you, I also know that you are a soul expression of the Divine here with me for the next few months.
So, this year…I want to face you, my companion, and….well…be in relation to you.
I struggle with you each season because I see myself decline in your presence.
But this year, I am wanting to look you in the eye and instead of feeling like your cold, dark presence has power over me…I instead want to listen to you, feel you, be open to you, and see if there might be merit and mystique in your spirit that I have not yet understood.
This year, I make a vow to not speak ill of you.
I will seek to understand you by holding a stance of inquiry into your deeper dimensions. I will look for things to be grateful for…gifts from you to me in this season.
And, maybe in the end, I will still feel slow, sluggish, poochy, and depressed.
My hope is, though, that I will also connect with your soul, my winter companion.
You are here with me for the next few months.
Let us look at each other and listen to the beauty in one another. I hope to discover the pulse of life that is cloaked in your cold terrain.
