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Stillness in Winter feels different to me than in any other season. It is deeper somehow.
Everything is resting.
Everything is waiting.
I have that feeling of dormancy, a very purposeful and productive waiting.
Even the questions aren’t being answered.
I am called to just be in the stillness, to somehow just be in the stillness and the calm.
Nature knows when it is time to work, and when it is time to rest.
Something within me knows too.
What is it time for, for you?
The rain has been falling steadily all day.
I get back from my long walk and I am soaked.
All day, before my walk, I have felt closed in, wrapped in a dark, grey sky.
I have felt challenged by the rainy day. Dark, wet days dampen my spirits.
When I was a kid, rainy days were play days. I would set up a tent with a blanket and a card table, and I would hide inside and sequester myself from the world all day.
I created Rainy Day Kits full of my favorite reading and art supplies, and I would spend the day creating stuff and reading.
I looked forward to rainy days.
Now I am wondering: what is the opportunity in rainy days? What would be different if I went with the natural invitation and rhythm of a rainy day?
Rather than a dark, rainy day being a suppression of energy, it might be about relaxing into a different kind of energy.
All around us in there are cycles in nature: inward and outward, waning and waxing, incubation and growth.
The adult version of the kid rainy play day would be an interior day, a closed-in day, a day with some time for some reflection, and play, and nourishment.
What if I trusted these cycles, and went with them?
I’m curious about what effect it would have on my work, if I honored the natural cycles of waxing and waning.
What are rainy days inviting you to?
Today is a very mild day, for deep winter, and there’s a thick fog.
I can’t see my neighbor’s house or driveway, and the detail on all the trees has faded into a blur.
The damp is penetrating.
This is the latest in a number of grey, cloudy, colorless days. Nature is resting.
When it is like this, my vision is obscured. I can’t see much, and what I can see is blurred. Much of what I can see is a dull monotone.
This is a good reflection of how I am feeling: very quiet, and like it is time to rest.
I can’t see much in the way of a vision for my business right now. It feels like it is growing and changing, but the details are unformed at the moment.
As a professional coach, I live and work in a world that says that we “must” have a vision. Part of what I do as a coach is help my clients clarify their life and work visions.
As an owner of my own business, I am told by business professionals that it is essential to have a vision, for my business, for content that I publish, for social media engagement, and for a whole host of other things.
I agree that it is desirable to have a vision. Visions can be compelling and motivating.
However, sometimes there isn’t a vision to be seen or clarified. Sometimes the vision isn’t ready to be revealed yet. Like the dense fog outside, in time, clarity will re-emerge. What is called for in these times is patience.
Wisdom tells me that visions aren’t made; they reveal themselves from our deeper wisdom.
Whatever vision is needed for me will emerge when it is needed, from a space of listening within.
My challenge is to refrain from pushing on it. I don’t like being in fog, literal or metaphoric. I often try to do something to get out of it.
The fog is the wisdom, today. It’s telling me that while things are unclear in the moment, in good time, the fog will lift, and what I need to know will become clear.
What is foggy for you right now? What if you waited until the fog lifts?
This picture doesn’t go with the writing in today’s blog. The scene isn’t a metaphor for life, or, if it is, I’m not seeing it the story in it yet. It is just a beautiful scene on a deeply cold winter day.
What is calling to me today is the Rilke quote from Letters to a Young Poet, about living the questions.
“Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”
-Rainer Maria Rilke, 1903, from Letters to a Young Poet
What Rilke says is a match to my experience of life.
If you read my blog, you know that it is all about the questions. I am always asking myself questions and I always offer a question to you, in case it resonates with your soul.
I find it very freeing, that we don’t have to have the answers. And, even more, that we don’t have to strive or search for the answers. We don’t have to figure it out.
All we have to do is Live the Questions Now.
But, what does that mean? How do we do that? (I’ve always got a question!)
I think Rilke gives us a clue in his quote when he says “try to love the questions themselves.”
I love questions, but I think I could “love the questions” more. I could wake up in the morning with a question on my mind and just love that I have the question alive in me.
I could love that question like I love other things. I could fill my heart with love and gaze at it. I could love it, appreciate it, savor it. I could turn it over in my mind, delighting in every aspect of it. I could fill my heart with love and send it to the question.
That would be fun.
I think there is another piece living the questions, and that is to hold the questions with a light, playful spirit of curiosity.
And, to be ok with Not Knowing. That might be a little more challenging, in our culture. We are supposed to have the answers.
Some of the questions that are alive in me now are:
These feel like big questions. But, I don’t need to have the answers. All I need to do is to Live the Questions.
What are the questions that you are living right now?
I’m walking Harper. It is a mild day for mid-winter, 32 degrees F. There’s a slight breeze coming off the snow fields, so it feels a bit cooler.
We’re walking along a path that was made by a snowmobile a few days ago.
There are a lot of things that I don’t love about snowmobiles. One of them is that they are really noisy. Their sound cuts through an otherwise tranquil, deep winter night.
However, given that I am such an equipment hound, it would be incongruent of me to despise snowmobiles altogether.
Snowmobiles make paths through the farm fields. They compact the snow so much that it makes it very easy to walk on the path that they cut.
This opens up a whole new territory for me in the winter. I have to love that.
The irony of me wanting to walk on someone else’s path is not lost on me.
All of my life, I have eschewed others’ paths through life, in favor of cutting my own.
I have a bit of a rebel nature, and I like the independence and creativity of finding my own way.
Then I made an obvious discovery. You really can’t follow someone else’s path. You only have your path.
Or maybe even more accurately, “Travelers, there is no path, paths are made by walking.” – Antonio Machado
How do you find your path?
Harper and I are again walking at dusk. It is a mild Winter night, around 20 degrees F, snowing lightly and softly. I am so grateful for walking again, after a spell of brutally cold weather which was not fit for woman nor beast.
We get to a forested area, and when I look up, an almost-full moon is peeking out from some clouds. It is visible just over the top of the trees.
I can see that it is almost full, and I long to get another glimpse of it, but the clouds come in and cover it up.
Harper and I continue. It is such a nice night, that we walk longer and farther than I had expected we would. The walk is giving my mind an opportunity to clear, and to rest. All I need do for right now is to steer us safely through the snow.
The moon peeks out from the clouds just briefly as we walk through the yard of the long-ago closed-school. The yard is blessedly desolate during this time of the year.
We walk down a street with a few houses, and they are quiet, too.
The more I walk, the more I want to walk, but it is getting dark, and I’ve forgotten the flashlight, so we turn towards home.
As we do, I turn to look behind us, to the East, and there is the moon, full, in all its glory. The thick clouds have left the sky. It is absolutely still, and I stop to take in the beauty of the scene. My soul craves this stillness.
The full moon reminds me of the beauty in the cycles in nature. There is fullness and emptiness, or darkness. There is waxing and waning. Nature is always going through cycles.
We all also go through these cycles, even if they may not be as clearly noticeable as the phases of the moon. Our own creativity waxes and wanes. Our spirits go through periods of feeling full, and feeling empty or dark.
The moon helps me remember that no matter where I am in the cycle, change and transformation is afoot. Heraclitus said “The only constant is change.”
What is changing in your life?
I’m out on a walk, on the coldest day of this winter season so far.
It is minus 15 degrees F wind chill. I’m walking really fast, head down, into the wind.
It is so cold that my breath feels like it is freezing on the way into my body.
I love my walks, and I almost flew the white flag of surrender today, given the cold. But I had taken all the time to get the dogs’ boots on, and thought I’d try a walk on the road, rather than in the yard. We usually get better results out on the road, if you know what I mean. 🙂
But, I admit it; my focus is on walking fast to get to the end, back in the house, where I can have a warm cup of tea. I’m definitely just putting in my time.
Cinnamon stops for a moment, and I suddenly realize that I am not at all present in this moment. My mind is all wrapped up in thinking about how fast I can get back in the house. My mind is on that cup of tea.
I stop and take a few deep breaths. I deliberately center myself and come into the present. I clear my mind of all of its thoughts, and I look around, and I just feel, with all of my senses. This is always what brings me into the Now.
It is a stunning day. The sky is a bright sapphire blue, and perfectly clear, without a cloud in sight.
There are diamond glints, all over the snow. The light, fluffy, ivory snow that fell last night is sparkling. The surface of the snow is clear and perfect; the woodland creatures haven’t been out on this patch yet.
I let myself feel the breeze, and suddenly I become aware of the warmth of the sun on my face. I hadn’t even noticed that before. I am smiling in pleasure at the sun, which we haven’t seen in days. I just soak up the sunlight; it makes me feel so good.
Yes, it’s cold. But it is so much more, and I hadn’t been able to see any of the “more,” when my mind was completely possessed by how cold it is. I completely missed the full beauty of the day.
In the winter around here, we all seem to take up the hobby of Weather Watch. We become amazed at how cold it can become, and then when it becomes that cold, we become even more amazed at how much colder it can become. We develop a bit of a weather obsession, and we act like we deserve a badge of courage for how much cold we can tolerate.
None of that matters. It matters that we dress intelligently and stay safe, but beyond that, if we truly wanted warm weather, we wouldn’t live here.
In my obsession with the cold today, I almost missed the day. I certainly missed the beauty of the day, until I woke up, halfway through my walk. So I am asking myself: how can I be even more present to my life? How much of my life am I missing? How much beauty is there to be savored?
How much beauty is there, just waiting to be savored, in your life?
It is the day after a violent sleet-snow blizzard, and it is utterly quiet.
I breathe in the stillness, and appreciate how nature has settled into a silent reverie.
In stark contrast to yesterday’s bedlam. the snow is a meditation of white, wonder, and awe.
It feels like everything is at ease.
Yesterday, I was standing in this very same spot, as the 50 mph winds howled with what felt like menace. The sleet was beating on my face relentlessly. The road disappeared and left behind a flurry of disorientation.
Today, I settle in, too, and as I do, I begin to take in the beauty of the landscape.
I often fail to appreciate the depth of beauty in winter, but today it is undeniable. The subtle shades of browns and greys lend a complexity to the land that takes my breath away.
The variety of shapes, colors, and textures, in the most ordinary of landscapes, is stunning.
It is like all of nature’s winter beauty has come out to show itself, after being in tumult, and hiding, yesterday.
Nature is such a lesson in impermanence.
It is also a reminder of cycles.
Like nature, we all live in natural cycles of waxing and waning. Our own creativity consists of bursts of activity, and then quiet, dormancy, incubation.
I am reminded of how I often expect myself to just keep going at a steady pace. This determination to keep plodding on is an unrealistic, and unfair, expectation. Nature teaches us this.
As I walk along in the calm tranquility, I wonder: what would be possible if I learned to sense the ebb and flow of my own natural rhythms, and, even more importantly, I respected them?
What would it be like for you, if you respected your natural rhythms?
I’m out on our road, near sunset. It is cold, and the sun is bright in the western horizon. I’m walking down to our neighbor’s driveway, to deliver a note to their mailbox.
I’m on a rare walk by myself. I take my time to savor the winter landscape. The colors are stunning tonight: blues, violets, and oranges, all set off in high relief by the white of the new snow.
It’s cold, but the wind has died down, and I’m breathing in the sense of calm.
What I am noticing most is the space.
I cherish living in a place with such a feeling of space. This is the land of the prairies, where the horizon stretches on, seemingly endlessly.
I live out in the wild, wide open spaces, where the wind blasts down from the north in the winter, and the coyotes and foxes roam, and the red-tailed hawks soar.
The spaciousness enlivens me. It feeds my soul.
I grew up in the hills of California. While it was relatively unpopulated then, it had a completely different sense of space. I felt contained and held by the hills all around me. There was hardly a flat piece of ground anywhere around us. You walked out of your house and you either went up or down.
Now, I live on a slight hill, in a small woods, and I feel held and contained by the trees. The hundred-year-old oaks are like sentries, standing in a wisdom circle around us. I can feel their powerful, grounded energy. I love this feeling of being held and contained. It feels very grounded and nurturing to me.
However, I also need the wide open spaces. When I get out in these wide open spaces, I can breathe. I feel expansive. I can feel the sense of possibility that is present in these spaces. I’m very aware that I need clear space if new things are to come into my experience.
I feel like we all need both experiences: feeling grounded, held, contained, and being in the wide open spaces of vast potential and possibility.
It is like they do a dance together, and they both serve me in very important ways. I come home and feel grounded, and then I go out where I can breathe into pure wide open space, to know what’s possible.
How do you get a feeling of space in your life?
It is a pitch-black midnight, with a crescent moon. I am out on the property with Harper the Dog for his last constitutional of the night.
Suddenly we hear a loud, piercing chorus of screaming, howling, and yipping.
The pack of about fifteen coyotes is down by the road and moving in our direction.
The first time I heard a whole pack of coyotes in close proximity, I learned what people mean when they say that the hairs stood up on the back of their neck.
Even now, a slight chill goes down my spine, and a bit of panic rises in my throat.
I often have this primal fear reaction when I hear the coyotes.
I take a breath, and settle down. I remember that I have never actually seen the pack, even though they have lived in our immediate vicinity for years. Once in a while, I see a solitary coyote at dawn or dusk, and they always keep to themselves. They avoid human contact.
I calmly walk Harper to the house, and we go inside.
I always believe that there is meaning for me in these close encounters with wildlife.
I thought about spirit’s message for me in hearing the coyotes so close tonight.
This interpretation seemed to fit for me: “Coyote Spirit Animal appears for you when you seem to have lost your way. Coyote animal speaks of the path less traveled, of the path that is hidden from plain view – as this is where you will find you way to the answers you seek. Solutions come in unexpected ways, and coyote is your trusted guide on this mysterious path.”
I have always chosen the path less traveled, and I am often in need of an intuitive, unseen guide on that uncommon path. Having read this interpretation, I now take comfort from our close encounter with the coyotes on this night. I am reminded that I need only meditate and tune into my intuition to sense the answers that I need in any moment.
What are your unseen guides, on your path?
