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Reflections on Winter

For many years growing up in the country and seeing the crops coming to full growth after being buried in the soil, made spring my favourite season. When I got into surfing, summer became my favourite season. To my great surprise this year, it has been winter, my least favoured season that has captured my spirit.

There is something about the cold foggy mornings enveloping the landscape and limiting the vision. There is something about the trees being stripped bare and the garden beds with little colour. There is something about the sun’s late start to the day it’s going early to rest. There is something about rugging up against the cold and about being inside to escape the frost, the rain and the wintry chill.

It’s something about things appearing ‘dormant’. To all appearance, they are. But this year I have been struck by the reality that nothing is actually dormant. The seed in the soil is quietly germinating, the trees are preparing their spring fashions, the flower beds are preparing their colourful costumes, the sun is resting before the long summer haul, and we are given some respite from the frenetic activity that marks the warmer months.

What is it like to be in ‘winter’? How do I experience it? What lays dormant in me that is slowly germinating? Is there something in me that am I rugging up from and seeking to block out? What in me is awaiting the thawing of the spring?

Dare I just sit with what is in the stillness and uncertainty of my life and place it before the Lord? Dare I allow that which is dormant to be called to life in me, just as Jesus called life into Lazarus? What might be God’s invitation to me this winter?

In reflecting on winter, Sr. Margaret McHugh RSM, quoted her Aunty Sylvia who recently died at age 85. Aunty Sylvia often said:
“No life is complete without winter” - a wisdom which only now, is beginning to germinate in me! Perhaps it is this wisdom that lies at the heart of St. Paul’s deepest hopes and aspirations for us:

“This then, is what I pray, kneeling before the Father, from whom every family, whether spiritual or natural, takes its name: Out of his infinite glory, may he give you the power through his Spirit for your hidden self to grow strong, so that Christ may live in your hearts through faith, and then, planted in love and built on love, you will with all the saints have strength to grasp the breadth and the length, the height and depth, until, knowing the love of Christ, which is beyond all knowledge, you are filled with the utter fullness of God. Glory be to him whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.” - St Paul to the Ephesians 3:14-19

May our ‘hidden self’ come to life in Christ through our winter journey.

Fr. John Curtis CP