WINTER ARRIVED TODAY

Winter arrived today. The winds are greedy and fierce, and ripping away the burnished gold remnants and tossing them hurriedly to the ground. The sky is bands of iron and lead and bright ivory. The earth appears stunned and a bit frightened.

Winter is more than a hint now, and has announced its coming with a splattering of cold ferocity. The trees are being stripped bare, and the ground browns and hardens. Yes, there will be a few warmer days which carry memories of an Indian summer, but for the most part the methodical march to Winter has begun. There is simply no stopping it now, and we are all aware of its steely determination.

Folks get anxious with its coming, and claim to dread how it traps and punishes us for months at a time, but that is not it. Winter is just too candid about death and dying, and too familiar with this thing called aging. This is the season of solitude and stillness and silence, and it reverberates with eerie echoes of the vanishing of summer play.

Winter is when we see Time through a wide scoped lens. Childhood has been swept under a vile stained Oriental rug, and adolescence is no more than a whiff of sex and strutting and pretending to be bold. Adulthood has proven a cruel joke, all duty and obligation and haste, and the absence of adventure or joy seeming almost absolute. We try to act as if we accept it, and yet it has so drained us of our yearnings.

We are not angry or even hurt. We have our days of satisfaction of even significance. Still, so much of it has been a disappointment, a failure to live up to its billing, like a Christmas spoiled by a family spat or squabble. Winter weaves its stern shawl about our shoulders, and we know that we will be tucked in under blankets of our losses. What makes Winter truly brutal, is simply all it knows of our failures and flops and refusals to forgive.

No, the dread of Winter is not created out of some fear of record snows or even cold, but for the whispered messages it delivers on things being over for another year. It is a time of passage, a movement of the clock, a slowing of the pulse, and a waning appetite for dawn. Like the tufted pearl grey sky which lower before unleashing a wild and wicked series of drifts, grinding our lives to a halt, Winter comes with immense insight into the brevity of Life as a whole.

I am listening to it as I write. It’s rumbling train whistling winds, and its fury over our having failed to notice the spectacular presence of autumn. It does not knock, but knocks down the door to our soul. It comes in unannounced and takes up residence. It is here. Not a visitor, but making itself very much at home. It has plans for us.

Winter slouches into an easy chair readies itself to tell many a good story. Tales of hard fought wisdom won, and sagas of journeys that led to love or hope or happiness or all three. These stories will be what enlivens our status as victims of cabin fever, and will heal us into Spring. These good stories, which will bounce about our lie battered brains, and dance a heated dance with our memories of years gone by, will be our soul’s wintering feast.

These good stories are the beauty of Winter. Even more lovely than a first snow, or a black velvet sugared sky. These stories will arouse longings deep within us, and move us to the higher ground of wanting another go, another year, another try. These words coated in the Word of God, will inspire us, will tickle us back to Life, but Life on God’s terms and not our own. Winter is when we do not become better, but smarter. It is when we finally recognize the wisdom of following stars – as we are all made of stardust, and it is only logical.

Winter arrived today, and like a stern elementary school teacher with wrinkles galore and a hard grey bun atop her head, will tell us to STOP AND LOOK AND LISTEN – get ready to learn. Now be quiet children, and listen up, way up, and let the heavens inform you of the Truth of this crazy difficult life of yours.