You’d think this season would be sleepy. After all, many critters, great and small, are asleep. Even the sun is sleepy, going to bed early and sleeping in late, casting our world into seasonal cold. We claim this as a season of rest; of cuddles and fires, of blankets and naps. We retreat indoors – for that is the place life is sustained. Chickens retreat to their henhouse to keep their dainty digits out of the snow. Cattle long for the warmth of a barn – or at least of each other! Dogs and cats huddle in houses, whether little and private, or large and shared with their people. And people, too, prefer the warmth of their homes.
Yet this winter, I’ve been amazed at all the life there is yet to be found outside; a walk through the fields after sleet, ice and snow, revealed amazing proof! Fifty or more rabbit tracks streaked across the paths – some in a mad dash, others taking the same comfortable path leisurely back and forth, wearing down the snow. Deer tracks cris-crossed the field, and weaved in and out from among the woods like haphazard stitches in the white, wintry tapestry. Bird tracks textured the tops of the snow, revealing happy little dance moves impossible for big, blundering boot-clad feet to imitate, and mice or squirrel prints darted to and fro, interrupting the twittering tangos.
There were signs of felines and signs of canines, signs of leisure and signs of struggle. There were signs of hunting, signs of the hunted, signs of resting, signs of searching for food. No creature did I see as I laboriously lumbered on my way, leaving clumsy tracks of my own, yet the signs of life lay marked in the snow as vivid proof that not all who call these acres home are asleep.
Oh, but then, there was the bird feeder!
A hive of wintertime vibrancy and life! A swirl of pigments, brilliant feathered balls of color, like Christmas ornaments, flittering about upon the barren boughs of trusty trees, naked in the cold, yet adorned with such color and song – a cheerful chorus breaking the chilly silence of December. Their color and song stark against this dull, pale backdrop of creation as she sleeps. The coldest cold, the darkest night, the emptiest season, cannot break these bustling, bubbly birds from sharing their spectrum and song. In fact, they seem almost purposeful in their pittering, as if to pronounce the promise of the coming spring to us who wait for warmer days.
I find my own soul in a spring of sorts this winter – a gentle spring, after a brutal winter – a very long night of the soul. And as I find the footsteps in the snow, or steep in the carol and complexions of the birds, or finally peak beneath the melting icy carpet to glimpse minute bits of pale, somber green – sleeping garlic and strawberries, waiting for warm and sun to burst forth new verdant shoots in defiant declaration of a shift in season, I find myself looking back into that painful winter of my heart. And though I couldn’t see them then, I can see them now. The path of tracks left by an unexpected friend, zig-zagging across the tundra of my soul, leaving etchings of hope in her wake. The colors of good neighbors and a lovely community, brightening up dreary days. The dormant fruit waiting beneath the icy surface of my heart, only just beginning to green up and greet the dawn. The song that never died, but persistently called me onward toward this coming spring.
”The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not over come it.” John 1:5
And here I end. For this is a rather fresh thought, one I am still dwelling upon. Yet I think it good to share it for now, incomplete as it may be. Perhaps it’s a thought you might want to borrow and rest with a while too. Perhaps you’ll find the ending within your own reflections. May God give us all eyes to see and ears to hear.
-SF
Written: 1/28/24
Cotton Ribbons 