A Prayer for Winter

We give thanks for the blessing of winter:
Season to cherish the heart.
To make warmth and quiet for the heart.
To make soup and broths for the heart.
To cook for the heart and read for the heart.
To curl up softly and nestle with the heart.
To sleep deeply and gently at one with the heart.
To dream with the heart.
To spend time with the heart.
A long, long time of peace with the heart.
We give thanks for the blessing of winter:
Season to cherish the heart.
Amen
~Michael Leung, The Prayer Tree

Last week I came across this prayer while leaving the time I had spent with my spiritual director at the Carondolet Center in St. Paul. These monthly sessions ground me and remind me to pay attention to the movement of the Holy in my life. The hope is that if I can have these reminders I might actually be able to help others do the same. Some days, weeks, years are more successful than others.

We are just over 24 hours into the season of winter. Yesterday in late morning the Winter Solstice suspended us between seasons for a brief moment of darkness and light and then began spinning us once again toward an ever-increasing experience of light. The months ahead we call winter and they have their own texture and gifts to offer. In Minnesota the snow that came a few weeks ago has a guarantee of sticking around as the temperatures plummet over the next week. Christmas Day is likely to be colder than any we have had for some time.

I am a friend of winter and of the cold. I am thankful for the ways in which slowing down is a requirement in winter. Otherwise you might find yourself flat on the ground having moved too quickly across icy pavement. As the prayer says, winter is a time for soup and reading and curling up and dreaming. These can be heart-space practices.

Lately, I have been thinking much about the heart. Heart is both real…that organ which keeps us alive and moving…and metaphor…that deep held place of love and passion and compassion. In these Advent days, I have been companion to those whose hearts are expectant with the promise of new birth and new adventures. I have also been present to those whose hearts are breaking with grief and despair and loss. It is easy to think that this Christmas season we hold so dear and dress up in all kinds of fancy, shining garments would not have any of the later. But we know this is not true. The world and all its seasons and celebrations keeps moving even as our hearts rejoice and as they break.

One of my favorite lines of scripture telling of the first Christmas is the description of how Mary, the mother of Jesus, looked around the stable where her baby was born and took in the animals, the shepherds, the angels and the magi and ‘pondered it in her heart.’ In this pondering, Mary was not unlike most new parents. With a heart warmed with the promise of a new life, most parents ponder…cherish…those experiences in ways they do nothing else in their lives.

As a season to cherish the heart, winter can be a great teacher for both joy and sorrow as it calls us to a pace and rhythm that strengthens this life-giving muscle. Called to reflection and quiet, we can be called to our own pondering of the stable in which we find ourselves. May there be blessing in both beating heart and place of compassion as we make our way toward Christmas.