Dark winter and the soul

In a season of grey, quiet fires burn in black iron woodstoves. Outside cold white ground awaits several more inches of similar cover.  The bitter air will not leave the teens today and such harsh winter temperatures breed isolation. 

 

Winter’s solitude can be either a thing of beauty or a prison.  Chilly isolation can be freeing allowing one the time and opportunity to winnow out the impractical, the unneeded, the unnecessary and the wrong. It can allow us to be fully responsible and free in the world and before the divine.

 

When the slightest wind blows these low temperatures cut into our flesh and sinew shaking our bones.  The slightest walk now requires a calculation of the means and the ends.  How much clothing shall I put on to take the refuse to the curb?  Can it wait until the morning?

 

These weather conditions can be the bars to an arctic prison.  If we are so agitated and so conflicted when winter sets in that we cannot address the things in motion in our soul its mandated stillness is nothing more than solitary in the darkest prison ever.

 

In almost an inverse relationship to the liberating quality of isolation some feel others will find only anger, frustration, depression or rage. Why?  Maybe it is that we have never learned to accept being alone. Maybe it is because we don’t like to think about whom we are and what we are made of.

 

As I stood in line for coffee this morning about six people were in the queue before me.  In wool and fleece, in boots and gloves with scarves wrapped tight not a single face cracked the merest hint of a smile.  The baristas tried to joke and cajole warmth and humanity from this lot but they were not having it.

 

When I looked at a couple of people they gave me that glance back that implied they wanted nothing to do with human contact.  Dour and dark with creased foreheads these men and woman shuffled forward.  Winter’s prison has already begun to gather its inmate population.