It’s winter here and almost the shortest day of the year. This season is associated with a mixtures of responses. I asked a group today on a ‘quiet day’ retreat what feelings and thoughts they associated with winter. Some said it reminded them of being rugged up in bed with a doona wrapped around them. (A doona is a feather quilt bearing this eponymous proprietary name.) Others thought of woollen jumpers, the open fires, the shorter days and longer nights; of cosy food. Yesterday I asked the secretary at the church where I am a minister what she associated with winter as a test run to the questions for the group today. Her response was quite different and unexpected. She spoke of the cold, of miserable weather, colds, of being shut inside. Her tone of voice reinforced the sadness she associated with this time of year.
I wrote the following poem in July 2007. I think it includes both the sadness and the joy which can be experienced at this time of year. It also suggests that winter can be a time of transformation, from a place of death, to life.
Winter has us in its icy grip;
It’s frozen fingers clasped firmly around our day.
The earth sleeps silently dreaming of the coming spring
when this globe will round the corner
on its way
toward the warming sun.
It is a time,
of colds which cause cancellations and inconvenience,
with scratchy children and their snuffly sleepless nights,
the smell of Vicks Vapor Rub and the sound of coughs.
But we are grateful for wintertime,
its fresh cold wind, woollen jumpers, swollen rivers - even floods;
the golden gift of low slung setting sun
so great our hearts almost burst with joy.
The earth sleeps silently,
in wintertime,
and your work O Lord is quietly going on
hidden from our eye.
But we are waiting, longing for our Springtime,
when like a gardener you will come to repair your ground.
Send forth your Spirit to renew our tired earth,
our worn down farmers, our anxious towns looking at the sky.
Bring forth the daffodils, the wattle’s yellow and the blossom;
signs of your resurrection work
and of a life to come when this living death will die.
© Rob Culhane 21 July 07
The winters in Tasmania are much colder than here in Melbourne where I now live. When I lived in Tasmania, I was working as a carpenter and I’d often go out into the countryside to work on a farmer’s house. I noticed that during winter time, there is not much for them to do. The days are shortened; frequently it is too cold to get motivated to be outside and not much is otherwise happening around the farm. Often it’s too boggy to be heading out into the paddocks. Once they have fed their cattle or sheep in the morning with hay cut from the summer, that was pretty much it for the day. In late winter, lambing season starts, but until then, it’s pretty quiet. Just the sound of the wind in the windbreaks of pine trees and the mournful sound of the crows or currawongs crying in the distance. In between not having much to do, I noticed they would repair their fences, especially when a storm had sent a tree branch crashing down on them. The wire fences were re-strained taunt again and fences made of the stones piled up so they look regular and not bedraggled with stones strewn around the fence’s base like a child’s Lego in the lounge room. Farm gates were rehung and welded and the farm machinery fixed or serviced. It was a time to tend to the overlooked jobs which have been deferred in the busier, warmer months.
Winter is like our mid-life. Not much is happening; we feel lost, dead almost. We are frequently mourning the loss of summer’s power and are aware of the silence and death detected in the winter’s approaching footsteps. It is an in between time, as we wait for spring. It is a place where there seems to be little going on, of darkened days. It’s silent, but it can also be a time for quiet transformation, of preparation for the spring. It is a good time to tend to the little disciplines and re-build the prayerful practices we have overlooked or deferred in the busier summer months. And winter provides us with a quiet time to listen again for the voice of God’s invitation to be converted and to accept his invitation to come, and move into a place of new life, the life of spring.
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