"...just remember in the winter..."

"It's the heart afraid of breaking
that never learns to dance
It's the dream afraid of waking
that never takes the chance
It's the one who won't be taken
who cannot seem to give
and the soul afraid of dying
that never learns to live…"
- Bette Midler

All winter long I looked out my kitchen window through the empty branches of the pear trees in our back yard to the park just beyond.  The sky above its 1,371 acres of dry and brittle winter grass, was laced with the spindly black trunks and branches of the thousands of sycamore, maple, oak and linden whose leaves had fallen by late November.

Day after day, in bright sunshine or lowering clouds they stood naked, uncomplaining as January buffeted them with ice and March winds howled.  Day after day I watched them with joy…without concern.  Why?

Because I knew that spring would come.  I was absolutely certain that warmer days would call forth bud and blossom.  I was confident that by May we would be taking our walks under a canopy of green again.

I have been thinking about this all morning.  There have been days when certain parts of my life have felt like those trees in winter.  Things that once seemed green and lush often appear, on the surface, lost, naked and vulnerable.  A project put on hold, a dream cherished for so long that it seems silly to continue hoping it will come true, a schism in a once vital friendship, a body of work lost in a fire, a hurricane, a hard drive failure.

How often have I been guilty of looking at the starkly naked evidence of loss and forgotten the law of spring.   How often have I, in  looking back at the lushness of a summer season, forgotten to welcome autumn…and winter.

In Ecclesiastes it says, "To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven…a time to plant and a time to reap…a time to break down and a time to build up…a time to weep and a time to laugh…". This gives me great peace.  I am no longer inclined to think that when I am in a weeping season that I have done something wrong, or, more likely, not done something I should have done, or thought…or prayed.

When I am most certain that my life is not defined by, or limited to, this chapter…this chronological timeline between birth and death…and I am least afraid of "dying," I am most willing to live my life fearlessly, and with courage.  When I am absolutely sure that no matter how much I lose I can never be deprived of my right to give, I am most generous.  Only by opening my hand and letting go, am I best positioned for accepting something new.

All winter long I lingered over the winter view from my kitchen window.  It was as if we had an apartment in Paris overlooking Versailles.  With the leaves off the trees between our house and Art Hill, I could see the museum perched on her pedestal in the park.  At night she was luminous in the golden glow of twilight.  Through the night her palatial lights cast an old world elegance on our neighborhood.  In the lush months of spring and summer it is difficult to see her through the tall canopy of leaves between my kitchen window and where she stands. 

It has often been in the bleakness of winter-like seasons in my life that I have learned the most about myself…I discover a resiliency, courage, patience I didn't remember I had.  And I learn so much about those around me.  It is when the winds of distain howl most loudly that I am most aware of the stillness of a friend's kindness.  

I have learned to love winter, not just as a prelude to an anticipated spring, but because it is often in the midst of winter that I am able to see things that are not as visible when all the world is lush and green and bursting with color, fragrance, and harmony.

"...When the night has been too lonely
and the road has been too long
and you think that love is only
for the lucky and the strong
Just remember in the winter
far beneath the bitter snows
lies the seed
that with the sun's love
in the spring
becomes the rose."

On to Spring…
Kate

"and I can see it in you..."

"It's in the blooming of an orchid
It's in the baby when she talks
It's in the sugar of a maple
And in silence of a hawk…
It's in your hungry neighbor
It's in the digging of a shrew
It's in the belly of the Buddha
And I can see it in you…"
Joe Crookston

It's the fourth day of March.  It's Super Tuesday II. Primaries are being held in Texas, Ohio, Vermont, and Rhode Island.  Here in Missouri it's a Winter Wonderland.  Big, fluffy snowflakes are drifiting down from a dove gray sky blanketing the city in silence.  There is a blustery wind sending swirls of visible cold around the ankles of students braving their way from apartments and co-ops to the corner coffeehouse.  But our family is almost cocooned in the warm smells of chocolate chip cookies baking in the oven and a vanilla candle near the stairs…the sound of the twins' laughter in the playroom and folk music seeping out from under Jeff's office door. 

It feels like the best parts of Christmas have been resurrected today.  The warmth of family and baking, the sweet sacredness of gratitude, the stillness of winter's promise…a child being born in a manger.  Today has that sense of quietness.  As if to remind me that underneath all this snow and cold there is a miracle growing…a small bulb has been sleeping -- waiting for just the right moment when warmth and light and the song of robins will call it to the breakfast table of Spring. 

I feel that promise today.  I sense that for all of us, there is a silent, unseen something calling us to a greater awakening…to rise and open our eyes to all that is budding and blossoming in consciousness…right now.

In 1994 some colleagues and I began witnessing a conscious stirring in collective human thought…an awareness of the inherent internal hunger for spirituality.  New books were being written and published that encouraged readers to probe and explore the unseen and unknown, television hosts were beginning to address the inner live of their guests, films were being produced with themes of transformation, redemption, forgiveness.

By 1996 we were fully engaged in this quest for all things spiritual and by the year 2000 we no longer had to convince one another that prayer had a radical impact on the our lives…it was no longer a question…it was a generally accepted paradigm for 87% of those polled.  When thinking back on that fateful days in September, 2001...the senseless acts of violence launched in New York and Washington, DC...events that held our hearts hostage, I am so grateful that we were a community of thinkers prepared to pray.  We were already primed by this hunger for something deeper, able to respond from a core of spiritual beliefs that had been nurtured by  whatever faith tradition or spiritual practice we had embraced.  And we did.  We responded from that core and discovered the best in ourselves.

Today the attacks on our peace are quite different…more subtle perhaps…but no less aggressive and frightening.  Unemployment in the double digits, millions of people losing their homes, a recession looming, and a health care crisis that for many keeps them awake at night often wondering what terror might lie hidden beneath the skin…their own or that of a loved one.

Our reponses and solutions could be the same today when terror rages within, as it was almost seven years ago…this time, instead of just starting with prayer and then looking outside of ourselves for a sense of peace, safety, security and hope, we can return to those core practices that gave us such direction and empowerment in the days following 911...and stay there. Perhaps we could continue by taking down the fences and boundaries that leaves us on an "us" and "them" playing field. 

What would change today if we were to treat everyone like out neighbor.  What if we were to think about our co-worker...whose child is ill requiring her to miss work...with the same compassion we showed the mother who hadn't seen her missing son since the Trade Towers fell and our hearts almost leapt out of our chest because we were so eager to extend our love to her...from wherever we were across this land.  What if the man who lost his job because of plant layoffs were treated with the same willingness to "pitch in" as the firefighter who was injured that day in September saving lives.  What if we were to pray for the millions of homeowners facing the loss of their homes as we did for those Trade Center neighbors who were displaced in the wake of jet fuel smoke over Manhattan.

We are all one.  We all live out from the same place…the kingdom of heaven.  We all have one supreme leader…a divinely good God.  We are citizens of one race…humanity.  We all have the same hopes…to love and be loved…to feel that we make a difference in the world, that our purpose is clear, and that we are valued for what we do.

We all have access to the same space of silence within…the place where God speaks to us of His ever-presence and love.  

So today, rather than looking to CNN or MSNBC to tell me what the state of our economic health, security or promise is…I am going deeper…I'm asking God how I can best serve Him.  Who does he need me to love, comfort, help, care for? 

There is something rising in all of us today.  It has been pushing its way through the cold soil of complacency and self-determinism, apathy and consumerism, frustration and distrust...it is strong and it is steady, it never gives up on us.   This unseen something knows the core of who we are as the children of God, it is stubbornly persistent as only hope can be…it is the very I AM in us that is springing forth…rising and rising to burst through the soil and breathe the light.

When we are silent we can hear it breathing in us, we can feel the shifting of the soil around our heart, we can smell it like scent of a crocus bud still striving beneath the dark rich earth.  Today I am grateful for the silence of the snow, the quiet of the frozen ground where something beautiful and grand is growing strong.  I am ready for Spring.

"O little town of Bethlehem,
   How still we see thee lie;
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
   The silent stars go by;
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
   The everlasting Light;
The hopes and fears of all the years
   Are met in thee tonight.

O morning stars, together
   Proclaim the holy birth,
And praises sing to God the King,
   And peace to men on earth;
Where charity stands watching
   And faith holds wide the door,
The dark night wakes, the glory breaks,
   And Christmas comes once more.

How silently, how silently,
   The wondrous gift is given;
So God imparts to human hearts
   The blessings of His heaven.
No ear may hear his coming,
   But in this world of sin,
Where meekness will receive him, still
   The dear Christ enters in.
- Phillips Brooks

The Christ in springing forth from the soil of our hearts...from the kingdom of heaven...Bethlehem in each of us...each moment...no one is left out.
Kate