KISLEV MORE THAN HUMAN WORLD 2

We are now in the middle of Kislev.  Hanukkah, the darkest time of the year with the least moon and the shortest days, is but a week away. I sit outside on a warm day for the time of year, cloud covered day, the sky a thick grey.  The landscape is slowly assuming the brown and grey colors of winter here in the mid Atlantic.  Even the leaves of the beeches and pin oaks that still cling to their trees have turned brown.  The changes are slow, as befits this slow, gradual, time of year.  We are meant to slow down like the last of the leaves gradually drifting down to the earth.

The other day I saw a squirrel climbing up a tulip poplar and working hard at a branch with some dried up leaves.  S/he freed up the leaves with just a little twig, and scurried down the tree and across to the bigger tulip polar with the whole in it where s/he spends the winter.  S/he is building a nest for the winter, I think.  I remember seeing this last year as well.  It’s almost like somehow it’s a level of insulation between her and the tree—or maybe not.

The whole landscape seems to have started to settle down into winter.  Even the birds seem to be a bit quieter and moving a bit slower.  I walked the dog past the suburban lawns this morning, and while the grass is still green, I can start to see the yellow creeping in and the green is just not as vibrant as it was even a few weeks ago.  Winter is coming and our bodies cry to slow down.

We live in a world where we are surrounded by light.  To sit by the fire and see the shadows—that’s one thing.  To live in the glare of TV and computer screens and lights 24/7, that’s something else.  To me the core question is how do I sink into the darkness of the season and hang out with it for the next three or so months until we see some hint of spring returning. 

This slowing down isn’t just or primarily a mental thing.  It is something necessary to experience, to know, in my body.

Where do you need to slow down in your life?

Today the sky is grey again, a light drizzle that wouldn’t even count as rain in Seattle or other climates where it drizzles regularly.  We are spoiled here in this easy climate of the Mid-Atlantic, though I suspect that 99% of people who live here don’t realize it or think about it that way at all. We get a lot of rain (more than 40 inches a year) which lets us grow a broad range of food.  We have a moderate climate that doesn’t get brutally hot or bone chillingly cold and we have a long growing season.  I feel routinely blessed to live in such a gentle climate that envelops me like a warm blanket on a cold winter day. And I’ve chosen to live in such a climate because it is a balm to my body and to my soul.  When I go to Northern California, I can feel the brittleness of the climate, the disasters of drought or fire just around the bend.  When I lived in New Mexico, a semi arid desert, it was easy living because of the warmth and the lack of rain, but it only worked because I got to see the barrenness inside of me in looking at an ecosystem that couldn’t grow grass.  And once I had done some of the inner work I needed to do, I was ready to return to a gentler climate.

We are not separate from the broader world in which we live.  We certainly think we are, and perhaps I am more sensitive than others to how the land feels.  But I think that sensitivity to the land is our birthright, a birthright that we have sold off for a bowl of porridge. 

I’m tempted to say that the sky is crying today.  Not a good sob like the hard rain we had the other night, but like someone trying to hold back her tears while they still leak out. That’s probably too anthropomorphic.  But the world has every right to be crying with all that humanity is doing to her.   And we have every right to be crying about the mess we have made of our lives and the world.

What we all need to find is ways to express both our gratitude and our grief. And they go together; the more we can express one, so the other will arise. I have a gratitude practice, but I don’t have a grief practice.  Winter here is a kind of death, a time when far fewer beings are alive.  It’s an appropriate death, because there is no life without death. Winter is as much a part of the cycle as the glories of spring.

As we move into the darkness and cold, I think it is time for me to develop a grief practice.

QUESTIONS

• Where do you need to slow down in your life?

• How connected are you in your body to the ecosystem in which you live?

• Do you have a gratitude practice?  What is it?

• Do you have a grief practice?  What is it?