Winter's Approach

A Reflection

It’s been too long. Time to say something, but what? Soon, it will be the end of another year—another hibernation, a time of burrowing deep and reconsidering everything. No one told me this about wintertide, this season of ever-shortening days, how it can be a moment of renewal if you know what to look for.

But I am learning to watch and witness.

The leaves blowing across still-green grass, the chilling of another day in subtle but notable degrees. All clues, indications of another reality, persisting but not insisting on being noticed. There is novelty here, down in the nether-ness of a year, something profound found at the bottom, in the darkest dead of things.

This season of sudden, uncontrollable shivers and questions as to how well one spent a year, this time of potential discontent, is not a death. But an invitation into a subtler form of living:

Quiet down, and you can hear the sounds of birds not migrated. Search deep, and you will see sprouts of life springing from dirt and tree branches. We are not done yet, it all seems to say.

This time is not a quick and demanding change but another careful step on the ever winding staircase of being. Where does it lead? Nowhere particular, but maybe up. Towards something more, something greater, something not yet seen.

This striving toward an unreachable height may be the most of what makes us human. Even, and especially, in winter, we look to spring.

When everything wants to fold in on itself, at a time when the cold forces you to contract—can you feel it now, the desire to shrink yourself and gather in for warmth?—at this time we are given an opportunity. To look inside the apparatus of ourselves. To engage in that aspect of the creative that is not so much productive as inductive. That which slowly stirs other things gradually into being.

This is a chance to turn toward something less visible. To cease activity and let other forces work their transformative powers. Here, in this season of liminality, change occurs. It is not forced or premeditated, only done when needed.

Through another season’s change, we see the whole, a never-ending series of starts and transformations all bleeding into one, colliding in atomic unity. Life from death. Light to dark. Winter as gradual realization of spring. It’s hidden things working to produce the visible. That’s what winter is: a quiet symphony.

And we, if we choose, are compelled to join the chorus. To not only watch as what could be takes on its own latency but to participate in the change itself. We can see the sickliness of leafless branches and accept their promise like that of a page’s blankness ushering in a new chapter. Every rich and vibrant thing comes from something dark and cold. Void produces everything.

We can sink with the solstice and let death do what it does—produce more life. When our earth seems farthest from its sun, we can see that soon things begin to brighten. The darkest night is the truest beginning.

This is something impossible. But we need not only trust and believe it but see it for ourselves. It is a funerary time of renewal, not as something to mourn but as a reminder to slow in procession. To quiet the soul and contemplate the preciousness of what is soon fading.

It is time to die, nature reminds us. And yet, we resist. With our screens and infatuations, our fad diets and crash workout routines, rushing from here to there and back to here again. Now we are invited to release, to slumber, to nap for as long as is needed. How else can buds break forth?

It is funny how she tricks us, nature with her alleged lack, her refusal to blossom for months. But there’s more here. Nothing goes away, nothing ever, actually, dies. It is buried with the walnuts, waiting for some curious squirrel.

And we, too, wait. Not passively or actively, but naturally.

I am stirred by the aliveness of transition, how the dying of a day explodes into starry night, with a thousand hues and more if it’s cold tonight. The gray of winter setting stage for summer. It’s coming, it’s going. I try to quiet down. To walk slowly through the neighborhood. To peek in to the diorama and see what subtle drama wants to unfold. Maybe it’s the Indian in the cupboard this time or the nutcracker performing his valiant display of courage. Maybe it’s the old man walking his dog.

This is the life of the cold: short slow days, steady winter movement. There is determination here in this season, patience required. How much life we find may depend on the cold we allow. But we won’t know for sure until it gets warm.

Thank you for reading The Ghost. This post is public so feel free to share it.

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© 2024 Jeff Goins
548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104
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