Winter's Summons
I watched the sunrise over my neighbor's house a few days ago. After five straight days of gray skies and damp cold, I was eager to watch the golden light emerge from the darkness. The bare oaks stood in silhouette against the coming winter morning.
I noticed how quiet Winter is.
Three quarters of the year in the South is between temperate to hot so the usual view outside my window is solid green. Fall comes so slowly and gradually in the South that the oaks don't drop their final leaves until Christmastide. By mid-February the the daffodils will be pushing up through the cold earth, the camellias will be blooming, and we will again have the hope of spring manifesting from the ground up. The color of hope surrounds me most of the time, but in January the oak trees stand silent and unadorned. The gray limbs are stark against the blue sky and the grass is the color of broom straw.
Winter is asleep, alive, rhythmically breathing, but not moving or speaking.
The new year brought climbing Covid-19 numbers and people storming the U.S. Capitol. The world felt like it was falling apart that week. Viriditas, the greening of the earth, is yet-to-be. Perhaps winter is the season of grief and lament, inviting us to lay low, stand still, or take a minute before we have an answer. Before we can 'get on with it,' as most of us would like to do right now, Winter beckons us to wait, to let ourselves admit the grief we feel for what is going on in our own lives, in our nation and in our world.
Americans have little patience for this work of silence. We’re a culture of perpetual spring and summer. We are entrepreneurs and producers. We don’t really know how to let go or be still- as the voices of Fall and Winter call us to do. Quiet waiting isn't in our DNA. To us, Winter looks unproductive, even lazy.
In 2011, after reading The Cloister Walk, I followed a whim and went on retreat to a monastery. When I first announced I was going to spend a weekend with Trappist monks ( who have taken vows of silence), my family placed bets on how long I’d last before the monks kicked me out for talking. I think 24 hours was the best odds anyone gave me. Two brave soul- friends went with me. Much about the weekend was brand new and foreign to our experience, but I clearly remember the one word I felt being spoken to me, “Silence.” God was wooing me into a practice of being with Him in a new way. In time, I would come to learn that silence has its own kind of voice.
As much as I love a conversation and the written word, practicing silence has been shaping me for several years, but it’s been saving me this past one. It’s counterculture and counter to my own nature; and therefore an act of holy resistance. Words are my way of mastery over the world or distracting myself from it. Words explain, defend, persuade, and manipulate. Silence demands trust. It’s one of the hardest practices for me.
Psalm 46:10 says “Be still and know that I am God.” Stillness is a space to practice trusting the unseen. The greening that is to come is in there, hiding in the dark earth and in the center of the brown tree trunks. We will see it, but not yet. Winter is God’s picture of Proverbs 3:5-6, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.” There is more going on that we can see. Embryonic life starts deep inside, in the darkness and the quiet of the womb, in the tiniest of flutters yet undetected by human neurons. Winter’s silence is God’s claim that it is all His own, and things are not as they appear.
The song “Lay Low” by Gretchen Peters echoed in my mind as I sat watching the sunrise that winter morning. “I think I need to lay low for while/ stare at the Gulf of Mexico for awhile/Take it easy, take is slow for while/I think I need to lay low.” Winter is God’s quiet summons to lay low, sit and stare, and take it slow for awhile. It is God’s invitation to be still, to grieve if I need to, and wait for His energy to bring new life.
