Welcome the gathering presence of the sun’s deep gladness,

this burning, this loving,

the purifying cleanse of snow and meltwater,

the upward call.

Seeds and sap

soon to stir

and soon, too, our own uprising

fed by the dark of the soul’s deep rest.

We have just passed through what many earth-based cultures refer to as the “cross-quarter day of winter”.  Early February marks the half-way point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox.  The depth of darkness has passed.  The light takes on a new tenor, color and frequency, in addition to a lengthening presence.  It is a time, in the earth’s the northern hemisphere, of a generative stirring as the life force begins to make its moving presence felt in all life forms, including our own.

This past week, in the forest adjacent to my home, I have been serenaded by the passionate barks and screeches of red foxes mating.  Great horned owls are likewise vocalizing their claim to nest sites and are incubating eggs, even as nighttime temperatures occasionally still plummet into single digits.  The waterfall moves back and forth from a frozen and silent solid to an exuberant liquid– in concert with the wildly fluctuating temperature.  Not all altitudes  and latitudes are expressing such dramatic outer fluctuation, but the changing relationship of light and darkness is stimulating an inner activation within all things and all beings at this time.

I notice, within my own depths, a resonant fluctuation.  There are nights when I feel I might sleep forever, lingering in the final moments of restorative hibernation.  And, there are mornings when I awake before dawn, eager to write the next book, prepare the next garden, learn to keep bees, rekindle tired relationships… all by the end of the week.

Deeper yet, there is a ground of being that is both on fire and quiet at the same time.  A part of me that feels ancient, slow, and as potent as the ground is potent.  No rush to get things done.  No need to source my energy and focus in deadlines and to-do lists.  I relax that desperate attempt to out-run God, to force things into existence.  Yet things get done, spring comes, because of me but not by me.

There is a fire in the soil that I want to know intimately.

Joseph

What is laid to rest,
silenced beneath the shroud of winter’s snow,
and folded into the forgiveness of these extended nights,
becomes the ground
from which the new
life begins.

*  *  *

Paradox lies at the heart of nature.  It governs the expression of any living being,
any living landscape.  And it is the heartʼs fluidity of perception that allows
paradox to reveal its deepest mysteries and liberating inconsistencies.

The meeting of paradoxical expression with fluid awareness brings vitality and
meaning to our living, whether we encounter that living in an outer snowfield or
an innermost expanse of the soul.  When nature is free to be itself, no longer
forced into a corner that the mind can control, then our life unfolds into the
magnificent symphony it is intended to be.

We find ourselves now in what we consider to be the first movement of the solar
yearʼs symphony that we call “winter”.  Its particular tenor comes from its
rhythmical kinship with what has come before.  Its expression takes on yet
deeper resonance as it is intimately connected with all that follows.  Yet in truth,
all of the “coming before” and all of the “coming after” are present now in this
crystalline moment.  We give the season a concrete name; we give winter a
distinct frame on the calendar, because that is what the mind is able to grasp.
But we risk loosing the music of an entity, once a thing or a being is held so firmly
in hand.

A winter is an autumn fully matured.  A winter is an unborn spring.
A tree is an opportunity for soil to live its way into the vulnerable strength of
limbs, and into the bitter-sweetness of fruit.  And a human being?  Perhaps, an
opportunity for demons to be released from their spells and live again as angels
on earth?

Look at any living being, including those you love and those you hate, including
yourself in both regards.  And see what lives before and what plays beyond the
note of attraction or repulsion.  And tell me, then, if you cannot hear the music of
the living thing, the living being, folded once again to the continuum of forever
becoming.  Can you not feel, there, in the soil of any being, the hidden wholeness
made of broken pieces?

Forgiveness… of all that has come before.  Acceptance… of all that is and shall
be.  Under the unconditional peace that these governances of heart provide, we
shall see a new world born.  And we will no longer get stuck on a particular tone
of grief or joy, or sadness or elation.  The larger symphony that has given rise to
these notes will be much more interesting to our heartʼs perception.  And
paradoxical occurrences as, letʼs say, a Christ child born in a stable, shall be
returned to our lives as commonplace.

The new world is already here, now.  It just needs someone like you and me to
host it. And so, the delightful challenge is to imagine ourselves and the world no
longer from the crisis of the moment, but from the invitation of a lifetime.  I wish
us all a well-imagined new year.

Joseph