Winter Gifts

Lord, I keep circling back around to the Four Directions.

What is your attraction to the Four Directions?

I love the balance of it. The aspect of stages of journey and growth, and the metaphors about how we perceive the world, and You, and ourselves. I like compasses and direction-finding, all the analogies.

 You have moved around the wheel many times, and you have stood or sat in the Center, trying to hold all the directions at once as balance. You always move around the wheel clockwise, corresponding to the seasons. You just began a new year, both in your calendar and with your birthday, and you are readying for a new business year as well. For you, the year begins in winter. For your friend in Australia, the year begins in summer, something beyond your reckoning, your experience. You’ve fallen ino patterns of thinking out of habit. So let’s walk the wheel backwards, in reverse, for a change. Jesus said, become as little children—that’s circling the wheel counter-clockwise.

That is counter-intuitive!

Let’s start where you are, in your year, in your body. Let’s start in the north, in winter, in the season of rest and reflection. Let’s start with all that is frozen and iced-over in you.

Lord, isn’t winter also about Wisdom and being an elder?

The Winter Gift of Rest is Wisdom, but that is not where you are, physically or emotionally. You still resist My Gifts of Rest. You eagerly embrace the gifts of the other directions, the other seasons of life, and relate them to work, to activity, to productivity. You resist winter’s gifts.

Doesn’t winter mean retirement: I mean that literally, like the last train station stop?

You are able to receive all three of the other directions within your life’s ages and stages—but not winter. So it is fitting we start here.

Some creatures hibernate all winter, sleeping away the cold in cozy dens, it is true. Others thrive in winter, making great migratory journeys to warmer climes. Winter can be about epic journeys—journeys to lands of plenty, to easier-to-find sources of nourishment and refreshment. Winter can be that for you. Think about your working life a minute. You often create your best images in a quiet winter setting, whether still and meditative or brightly vibrant. You used to always take your Florida vacation in winter, mimicking a migratory journey. You have sometimes used the slower months of winter to explore new creative outlets, or to write. Winter was a more balanced time of rest and creativity than it has become for you now.

So what am I supposed to do? In 2010 Patrick moved in. In 2011 Pete was sick. In 2012 we—he—renovated our gallery’s first home. In 2013 we had to leave that cottage and find, and renovate, new space. In 2014, we had a break, our last real vacation. Late in 2015 we bought SeaDragon and I had a lot to learn and quickly, to get ready for a new venture in a new place. Last winter we both hurt our backs, after the hurricane, and couldn’t go much of anywhere. This year we are once again moving, working to make a new space feel and look beautiful and welcoming. I don’t know how to balance work and rest—especially when I am trying to keep up with someone else’s pace.

You will miss all of winter’s gifts if you try to keep up. Remember the fox tracks you and Karen found in the snow in Carova, all those years ago? You need to set a pace for yourself that is sustainable, physically and emotionally and spiritually. What did I tell you before about choices?

To follow peace and joy.

So how much peace, how much joy, is your current pace providing? You are trying to skip over winter’s rest, morph it into summer’s pace of productivity and you are missing all of winter’s gifts in the process, gifts of presence of birds and wildlife. Gifts of words in books and essays, others’ words and your own. Gifts of subtle beauty in the landscape you are dashing right by. I want you to take up your walking stick and walk once again into winter. Amble a little. Set your pace to My rhythm. Do some of those winter delights that restore you. “Chill out” – a perfect winter turn of phrase. Allow your creativity to awaken and stir and stretch as you allow your body some rest and a slower pace. And if you must consider productivity, consider this—which images sell best, in your busy summer season?

The winter ones. Late fall to winter.

Exactly. The gifts you receive now will translate directly into summertime sharing—but only if you align yourself on the wheel to fully embrace winter and its gifts.

One Reply to “Winter Gifts”

  1. I’m featured!!…

    This is most insightful, and leads me to wonder of the cycle in the southern hemisphere.

    So following your example, your/His guiding and leading, I think I shall write, journal on this. And no doubt be all the richer for it.

    Thank you for continuing to enrich my life…for your ministry to thousands around the world.

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