The rains just cleared, and while puffed white clouds bloom across an azure sky, a flash of feathers darts across our yard and lands in our rain-drenched bird bath. It is an oriole looking for a place to bathe and preen. And so it does. A mockingbird soon joins him, followed by a pair of wrens. I can almost hear Glinda singing, “Come out, come out, wherever you are…” as the birds, one by one, come out into the light, enjoying this flash of springtime.
The analogy I want to make is clear, of course. Springtime always comes. Blue skies follow the rains. And when they do, we will heed Glinda’s call and come out, come out, wherever we are to join our world once again. This I know to be true.
But this I also know: winter always precedes spring. In fact, winter is required. And while our calendar winter is waning and spring is dawning, we are called to a communal winter nonetheless. A social one. A personal one. A heavy, dark, and deep one, we have discovered.
As spring dawns, seeds reach upward through the soil to bud and bloom. But those very seeds had been dormant through the winter. Winter is a time of quiet and rest and conserved energy. That energy is needed for the growth that is to be.
And that’s where we are, I think. We are in the quiet of a collective winter. There is a renewal at work here…deep and potent. Around the world we have been urged into quiet and rest. We are dormant, whether we want to be or not. And so we do rest. We become still. We do not do. We be.
Our world is requiring it of us. There is little choice here. Mother Earth has mandated a recalibration. We are on collective reset. I see it. I feel it. I’m sure you do too.
And I think we all see this as well: we have been brought back to the things that matter. We have been forced to simplify…to see what we need in life and what we don’t…to discover our resilience and resourcefulness…to relearn that we matter to one another, whatever our differences.
We are okay. We will be okay. Our spring will come. And what celebration there will be then, don’t you think?
But for now, let’s winter. We are called to winter. Let’s lie in the calm and quiet. The stillness. The darkness. The hush.
And breathe.
