Winter Reflections

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Hello Friend,

Snow and ice have started here in the Catskill Mountains of New York, USA. The local streams have shimmery delicate frozen edges that in a month’s time will have expanded and solidified. The deer and turkey are making regular rounds to our barn looking for every scrap that they can get to fatten up before the real cold starts. My small forge is no longer enough to keep my workshop warm, so my woodstove is running and adding its cheery light and smell to my workspace.

December has a lot on the menu to offer. Meteorologically, winter starts with the beginning of this month. We have new moons in the 1th and 30th, a full moon, the Cold Moon, on the 15th, the Geminid meteor shower mid-month, and the Winter Solstice on 21th. For those of you who follow the Maya cosmology the month starts with the end of the trecena of E’(Road) continues with the full trecenas of Kan (Snake/Serpent) and Tijax (Flint) and has B’atz (Monkey) starting on the 29th and leading into the new year. Here in the Northern Hemisphere many cultures will be celebrating their traditional winter holidays.

I have always been fascinated by winter. There is a brilliant quality to the sky, day or night, when the weather turns cold. The forest is quiet and still.  The more than human world is tucked in. It is the time where I settle into looking at what has manifested over the past Gregorian year and examine how I have responded. I ask myself if I engaged in the same habitual way or - did I try something different? Have opportunities to show gratitude, generosity, compassion, attention, or gentleness slipped by because I was unmindful? Did I fully engage with the experiences I had rather than try to collect them? When I stepped out of the forest did the landscape, internally as well as externally, feel more whole?  

The contemplative, cold, restful season gives time for reflection. The litany of questions I have for myself to mull over for the winter varies little from year to year.  The answers shift and slide over time as they should. The answers are not about being better or worse, that’s not the point, they are about being more authentic and present for whatever is arising.

What do you reflect about as the long, cold, shadow enriched winter sets in?

From my heart to yours,
Christopher T. Franza OMEC Board of Directors