On Winter Mornings

Outside our apartment, sparrows gather on barren branches, puffing their chests out and singing the cold away. Squirrels hunt for hidden caches of nuts, wishing they could remember where they’d been carefully tucked away. In the grey light of early morning, the stray cats slink into basements seeking warmer berth, leaving tracks in the fresh snow to greet us.

Upon waking, we rise and brew coffee to drink and coffee to share, slipping feet into furry shoes and grabbing the shawls that lay strewn aside chairs in wait. We fill the feeder outside with seeds for the birds and strew nuts about the yard for the skittering squirrels. We leave a bowl of kibble at the back of the house for the cats with no family to take them in. I don’t believe in not feeding the wildlife. We are all animal kin and we are living where their forests used to be.

Each morning we are grateful for the breath that hangs in smoky clouds against the cold. It means we are alive. We are grateful for the layers that warm us and the walls that shelter us.

I set a cup of coffee on the table for my Grandpa Dick’s spirit. When I was a child, he was the only one I knew who drank it. The smell of the bean still reminds me of him, even though he drank instant. My Grandpa remembered when they didn’t have coffee because of rationing and it reminds me to be grateful for the plenty we have daily.

I light candles for my ancestors, for those who struggled against cold and hunger and sickness… so that I might be here, in my heated home, wrapped in woolen shawls, my hands around a mug of steaming tea. I think of those loved by my family who were unknown to me, my Great-Grandpa Harold and my Grandma Ruth. I wonder about my Great-Grandma Margaret, who died when her daughter was eight. I think of my Great-Grandparents Royal and Hattie.

In the waking light, in my home with my family, I cannot help but remember those I loved who are no longer with me: my Great-Grandma Elsie, my Grandma Donna and Grandpa Dick. They were all parents to me. My Grandpa Mark exists only as a single memory in my head, but I remember him, too. I love him for the father he was to mine. Every morning I remember Luna and Bella. And every day the grief is less and the memories happier.

On winter mornings, we sit in the silence, stretching out our hearts and thoughts. We have gratitude for our family and friends we feel waking in their own homes, tugging at the strings of the web that connects us all. Though we are not geographically close, we are never far away. The web we share blankets the earth and there is great comfort in that.

In the winter we light fires and candles and turn thermostats to fight away the cold. I hold our sacred web against the dark days and the gloom of the world. As morning brightens, and days lengthen, we feed our cats, shovel our sidewalk, and take a moment to enjoy a late morning cup of tea together, drinking in the stillness of the season.

Winter Solstice Wonder: Snow Falling

“They say that every snowflake is different. If that were true, how could 

the world go on? How could we ever get up off our knees? How could we 

ever recover from the wonder of it?”

~ Jeanette Winterson, The Passion

The world we live in is a vibrant kaleidoscope of magic and science, for science is magic that has been placed in boxes; a deconstruction of wonder. It is this place of wonder my spirituality has found me, breaking down those walls of distinction to simply be moved by the beauty of… everything. There are days when I feel like I see the whole world for what it is for perhaps the first time.

Winter is coming to the land that I live on, to the city that I live in. In America, Solstice marks the beginning of our coldest days, which for those of us in the Northeast, usually means snow. It’s an excuse to snuggle down with loved ones and nest in blankets in the shelter of our homes. It’s a reason to pull into ourselves and reflect on what we have gratitude for, and what is important to us.

I also find snow to be quite beautiful.

There is breathtaking wonder in falling snowflakes, in the filigree of crystalline symmetry, as the little frozen worlds slide in to meet each other and catch on edges; each snowflake a delicate crystal. How amazing it is that they fall into each other, hugging and holding on to create something solid and larger than itself. Under a blanket of white, the sleeping earth becomes encased in diamonds of ice.

The sunbeams fall on snow, momentarily blinding our vision and we must reach into other senses. The dancing light flits across the surface of earth, refracting and sharpening in the cold chill of breath. And we smell winter, freezing against our mucus membranes. And we taste winter in the icy cold within our lungs. And every bare particle of flesh feels itself retracting against the frosted air. That is what it means to be alive in snow-drenched winter time. When the sun shines it’s brilliance we forget the cold, if just for a moment, and bask like lizards in the reflective gaze.

On Solstice night, we sit through the longest dark of the year. We’ve watched the days get shorter and we’ve been turning our porch lights on before making dinner. We’ve stood in bursts of sunshine and soaked up the solar vitamins in preparation. Winter may just be beginning, but with its start comes the promise of lengthening days. The air is cold but the sun is warm, a hope that shines through the intruding chill.

            Yet even as I anxiously await the first flurry of snowfall, I see the pattern of the worlds and know that as the darkness retreats, snowmelt will warm with the early spring breezes. It will sink into and feed the ground below us which, in turn, will nourish seedlings so that they might flourish in our gardens. Then plants and flowers will grow in warmer sunlight, to nourish our hearts and bodies.

            All this is wonder, beheld in the beauty of a single snowflake.

            On the longest night, we greet this turning. We greet this movement forward, into a new spring, a breath of freshness in an age-old pattern. What appears to be a never ending circle when viewed from above, is an ever-winding spiral, a journey circling around and moving upward with each turn when seen sideways. It’s a pattern we know, which is how I know that on winter nights, when the moonlight is strong, the fallen snow will shimmer with the reflection of the sky above us. The earth we trod will be awash with fields of glittering stars.

            That starlight lives within us, a spark of ancestral matter. And it is this gift I reflect on most. All the light I need lives within me. All the hope I need is in me. Every day, I hold fast to this truth and let it illuminate my darkness, and hope that someday, others will see their own source-light, too.

            “Your first parent was a star.”

             ~ Jeanette Winterson, Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles