Winter in Northern California: lately it's been gray, overcast and damp. You may have also heard about the powerful rainstorms that happened a few weeks ago, resulting in mudslides, flooding, hail and other happenings.
Yesterday I noticed that the cherry blossoms are blooming, and people are already preparing their gardens for spring.
Sometimes my heart is homesick for the winter of my childhood–waking up to the magical white blanket of snow, huddling by the radio to listen for school closing announcements, bare tree branches making more space for visible blue sky.
Everything
is born from
an opposite
and miraculous
otherness.
Silence and winter
has led me to that
otherness.
–excerpt from
"The Winter of Listening"
by David Whyte
photo courtesy of JLR
We experience our own internal winter, cold gray times when the new growth is so far underneath the surface of our being that we easily forget it's there. Times we hibernate in silence until we are ready to emerge. Times we can lose ourselves in the shimmering stars of the night sky.
I am curious about poet David Whyte's "miraculous otherness." Is winter a mirror for our souls, a window into the Other? What miraculous qualities exist in winter?
Winter sometimes has a mysterious hushed sound, an invitation into silence that vibrates with cold and light. Is that the ground from which everything is born?
What is the story of your soul's winter?