Spirituality of the Seasons II: Winter

Winter

Winter is the season of barrenness.  We stand, like the denuded branches of the trees, stripped of our coverings and exposed to the harsh winds of frigid and aridness northernness.  Barren, we become strangers even to ourselves.  Our imperfections, now exposed and visible to the world, seem to become the whole of our identity.  Lost in a world of monochromatic silence, like the silence of a snowy day abandoned by all of humanity, we perceive that we stand alone in the elements that batter us-- the snow, the ice, the howling wind.
No voice speaks from on-high in winter.  The heavens seem shut except for the falling snow and the icy gusts of wind.  And so we retreat deep inside ourselves, like the trees whose bruised and battered trunks still harbor green life within them.  We retreat into ourselves, retreating in hope and not in despair, retreating in order to fortify ourselves against the elements that lash about us in our lonely, empty solitude.  We fortify ourselves to wait.  To wait, even in seeming abandonment, to wait in hope for the redemption of our bodies.  This is the true grace of winter: like trees long exposed to the harsh winter winds, we become strong and sturdy in the hope of spring.