In Winter, Warmth Stands For All Virtue

I’ve decided in recent years that waking up before dawn is the most practical thing I can do.

When the morning is at its deepest, my mind at its most liminal, my children’s soft bodies still tucked warmly beneath their blankets, I can slip into the wilderness of an unobserved inner communion for a while.

I’m careful not to overlay this practice with too much prescription, especially as the days spiral inward on themselves with the approach of Winter Solstice. Each morning is its own creative act. What I want, simply, is to listen. To enter a silence from which some giving presence may emerge.

I may sit for a timeless hour, journaling small bits as I go. That’s a good morning. Often, my tea has just steeped when the sound of little feet scampering down the hallway arrives to announce the day. Mine is a practice of allowing life to flow in while maintaining an inner gaze — for this is my life, multi-hyphenated and brimming with kids still young enough to want my company.

Brene Brown wrote about midlife in this way: “You can’t cure the midlife unraveling with control any more than the acquisitions, accomplishments, and alpha-parenting of our thirties cured our deep longing for permission to slow down and be imperfect.” Straddled between my thirties and forties, I resonate with both the longing for permission and the sentiment of unraveling. As artists and contemplative practitioners, as human beings, we must claim the ground that offers itself to us at any stage of life. In some moments, like after a baby is born or when our professional or relational demands are completely overflowing, our sense of self-nurturance might seem fully buried. But even a longing remembrance of those hibernating parts is a kind of attention to our wellbeing.

To everything, there is a season. This week, backlit by the arrival of December, unanswered emails blared from the inbox of my closed computer. I could find no respite from the checklist scrolling through my head. There were the food drives, the winter showcase, the holiday markets, potlucks, and travel arrangements — plus all the gifts that had to be afforded, acquired, and organized. Plus, I was nursing a sinus infection.

These are signs of a bustling communal life, endowed with celebration. A life I love. ‘Tis the season, I remind myself. You can do it, I remind myself.

But I’ve come to suspect that many of us, especially parents and introverts, my primary camps, privately hang on by a thread through the holidays. There’s so much to do before year’s end. So many loose ends to tie up. “You can tell a lot about a person by the way they handle three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights,” wrote Maya Angelou. For those who celebrate the religious holidays this month American-style, the mandate is to spend, deck, wrap, tinsel, carol, swap, bake, hustle, and repeat. Time can feel like a horse breaking for the barn as momentum builds toward the end of the year — with us, heels clenched in stirrups, its anxious riders.

Thoreau wrote, “In Winter, warmth stands for all virtue.” For all the wisdom in retreating to the hearth as the darkness deepens, our curious cultural instinct is to push and grasp, to cram all the nooks and crannies of the month with consumerism and acquaintanceship. Our commonplace addictions can become more pronounced, luring us into the false solace of empty carbs and agitating the spirit. Loosely considered resolutions tend not to extend beyond the halo of the disco ball, if we attempt them at all. The New Year arrives with its promise of renewal, and we show up for it with meager provisions… in the words of Hunter S. Thompson, “thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming “Wow! What a Ride!”

Our approach to December might offer insight if we consider what we are unconsciously and collectively avoiding. Solstice is Nature’s annual sermon on death and rebirth, on darkness and light. The season challenges our senses to recognize the beauty of barren trees and frozen ground — and the tenderness that can be found deep within sorrow.

“There is a slumbering subterranean fire in nature which never goes out, and which no cold can chill. …This subterranean fire has its altar in each man's breast; for in the coldest day, and on the bleakest hill, the traveler cherishes a warmer fire within the folds of his cloak than is kindled on any hearth. A healthy man, indeed, is the complement of the seasons, and in winter, summer is in his heart.”

-Henry David Thoreau, “A Winter Walk”

There is a hearth that can only be accessed if we give ourselves permission to feel the sadness that is intrinsic to this human season. It’s the warmth Thoreau points to at the altar of the heart, the joy of Joni Mitchell wishing for a river she could skate away on. It’s not the most! wonderful! time! of the year! but the comfort of deep and abiding presence.

If you haven’t yet read ‘s Wintering, take yourself to the local bookshop and then prepare to curl up on your sofa for the long haul. She illuminates the lessons of the cold and dark, gifting us a roadmap for the season.

“I recognized winter. I saw it coming (a mile off, since you ask), and I looked it in the eye. I greeted it and let it in. I had some tricks up my sleeve, you see. I've learned them the hard way. When I started feeling the drag of winter, I began to treat myself like a favored child: with kindness and love. I assumed my needs were reasonable and that my feelings were signals of something important. I kept myself well fed and made sure I was getting enough sleep. I took myself for walks in the fresh air and spent time doing things that soothed me. I asked myself: What is this winter all about? I asked myself: What change is coming?

― Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

We can slow down and give ourselves permission to relate to this unraveling season more meaningfully. If we treat ourselves with respect and understanding, if we nurture down to the nadir, then Winter can provide us the conditions to meet our sorrows and avoidances with a bow of inquiry: What is this winter all about? What change is coming? The essence of advent, of awaiting an auspicious arrival, is to hold space for that which has not yet broken ground, that which is unseeable but faithfully becoming. We need only the willingness to wake up in the dark.

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