5 Things I Learned this Winter (2021-22)
“A subtle world dwells between things.” John O’Donohue
We are standing between the close of winter and and the arrival of spring.
Here in the Pacific Northwest, we have had both snow flurries as well as hellebores and crocus poking out their springtime heads in the same week. Daffodils glow in the eerie fog.
Two seasons are overlapping with the fading signs of one season refusing to go even while the newborn signs of the next are being born.
Let’s look around in this subtle world.
It’s time for one of my favorite spiritual practices - pausing to take stock of the lessons in one season before moving into the next. I do this in a quarterly rhythm I began in a community called “What We Learned”marked by the seasons in nature - winter, spring, summer and fall.
My prayer is always that you find in my personal lessons a point of connection with your life by way of encouragement, challenge, a simple spiritual practice, or a new book by your bedside.
Here are my winter lessons in no particular order.
It grounds me to notice what’s blooming.
I recently traveled to Georgia for work and to see the Georgia Peaches, age 6, 4, and 2 years. While I was 2500 miles from home, out of my time zone and my familiar routines, I found moments of joy by noticing what was in bloom. In Georgia it was the Star Magnolia and three wiggly bodies sitting in my lap at various times, or all at once in a jumble of knees and elbows.
When I returned home, it was daffodils, hellebores, and crocus, Mike, Kyle, Mojo and his parents.
There was something in the simple noticing that kept me in the present moment with the people right in front of me. I felt grounded and rooted, all puns intended.
I wonder what is blooming where you live right now?
2. God is always speaking. Expect to experience and experiment with hearing his voice.
I am not special for hearing from God. He speaks to us all. And his speaking to us is not unusual. The unusual part is our listening.
He will likely not shout. I am learning to listen deeply enough to recognize his voice in all of its whispered beauty, goodness and truth with a willingness to trust him.
Doodles. I recently realized my recurring journal doodles may not be random but have meaning for me. They may be an early indicator, before I have words, of something I am learning about myself and my friendship with God. These are repeating in my journal: an un-spooling ribbon or river, a shattered circle or sun, and a flower or pine cone made of dashes.
Ask God to speak in the night. I started asking Jesus to speak to me while I’m sleeping, when my guard is down and my imagination is open. Sometimes, I know just what he said. Other times, I have no idea his exact words, only that he has spoken tenderly to me in the night. Silence is one of God’s languages, along with beauty, goodness, and truth.
God’s voice is quite different than that other voice quick to point out all of my shortcomings before my feet hit the ground.
I am nodding my head up and down with Dallas Willard who wrote,
“I continue to believe that people are meant to live in an ongoing conversation with God, speaking and being spoken to . . . they are not meant to be exceptional at all. Rather they are the normal human life God intended for us; God’s indwelling his people through personal presence and fellowship.”
Teresa of Avila called this “sweet talk” - intimate conversations with one who loves you. I need to hear God’s voice for wholeheartedness, for peace, for Life.
Recently, I reminded my oldest Wonder (The Blueberry, age 6), something we taught our kids when they were young, “You know you can talk to Jesus anytime, anywhere, about anything. He wants to hear you.” His eyes flew open wide at the thought of such a constant audience.
As good conversations are give-and-take, I’ve started adding, “You can also hear Jesus’ voice anytime, anywhere, about anything. He wants to talk to you.” Followed by some quiet while we stare at the planets on his ceiling or out the window together.
The only question is, are we listening?
3. Making a creative idea checklist is helping me notice what ideas are stirring in me.
I heard author and Wharton professor Adam Grant talk about something he kept telling his students to do when making decisions about what to do next in their lives and realizing they may not know themselves very well. It proved so insightful for them to see for themselves, that he began doing it for himself.
The practice was keeping a running list of ideas in his back pocket. At the end of each month, he transcribed it into a document to see what’s on his mind or in his heart to do. He gave all kinds of permission for the ideas to be bad, lame, or passing.
In December, I opened a page in my journal, wrote the name of the month at the top, and began a running list, bullet-style. Every time I had an idea about work, a home project, a friendship, my family, a gift, a piece of writing, a collaboration, or a dream, a class or trip I might like to take, I wrote it on the page. I did not stop to judge it as worthy or how I might do it, I simply wrote what came to mind.
It felt good to have a catching place to hold my ideas. In a way, I had not done a single thing toward making any idea happen, yet in a way I had. I had caught it like a butterfly flitting around the garden suddenly lighting on my hand and letting me look at her wings.
At the end of each month, I type my list into a word document. I did not edit or judge the list. I did some brief noticing of themes and repetitions as I typed. It is remarkable that some had already begun, perhaps just for writing it down on the page.
Now that I have captured a 90-day list of ideas, I’ve noticed a few things so far.
• I have themes running through my life in this season. My themes are around deepening friendships (including family ones), spiritual direction, writing, home, resilience, and creativity.
• Something is afoot in me in these places with collaborating, retreat work, gathering, a desire to exploring painting, and place as a shaping character.
I wonder what ideas are stirring in you?
4. Questions we ask others might be clues for us.
My friend and I were talking about how it is not so easy to let God love us, not superficially or generally, but deeply and particularly. I asked her if she felt God would stop loving her. Of course, we didn’t think so, but how did we feel and so act?
We sat with the question until it began falling from our heads to our hearts.
My question hung around for weeks after our conversation. It was an honest question for her in the moment. It was also one for me.
I wrestled down any idea that God had to love me, that he didn’t really want to but did so anyway, reluctantly. God wants to love me. He moved heaven and earth to be near me in the flesh. He likes me. Not everything I do, of course, but he is bent on enjoying me, and by the way, you, too.
That led to other good questions, Do I like God?, Will I enjoy him?, Will I stop loving him?
It reminds me of the practice Adam Grant suggested to his students becoming the very practice he needed in his life.
5. I grow on a regular rhythm of reading biographies and memoir.
I have never forgotten the first memoir I read. I was about nine or ten-years-old when I read “Anne Frank - The Diary of a Young Girl” . I was completely swept away. My family lived in Holland at the time and it was very close for me. I lived with her for 761 days in the secret attic overlooking the canal. I was afraid for her. I was struck by her soulful observations, rhythm of writing in her diary, and outsized courage when faced with a war to erase her people.
After finishing the book, we visited her Secret Annex and I remember wondering how a girl who delighted in the sunshine and being outdoors could remain hopeful living behind a bookcase for almost two years.
After that promising start, it seemed biographies came to be for school book reports or the lives of celebrities.
In seminary, we had an assignment to read and report on three spiritual biographies of our choosing from Richard Foster’s book, “Streams of Living Water - Celebrating the Great Traditions of the Christian Faith”. I chose Harriet Tubman, Flannery O’Connor, and Evelyn Underhill.
I felt a certain electricity as I read about both the work and inner workings of these women I admired. I knew immediately this was a practice I needed in my life. So sharp was the electricity that I added reading biographies and memoirs of all kinds to my Rule of Life.
In keeping with that pattern, last year I read Eugene Peterson’s biography, A Burning in my Bones, and Katherine May’s, Wintering - The Power of Rest and Renewal in Difficult Times. Both are beautiful and insightful in their own way.
In January, in a great gulp of mystics, I read Enduring Grace - Living Portraits of 7 Women Mystics . All in one volume, I read about a variety of women in their spirituality and historical era when not many women were writers - Clare of Assisi, Julian of Norwich, Catherine of Genoa, Mechthild of Madgeburg, Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Avila, and Thérèse of Lisieux.
I also read several children’s books. I loved the Caldecott Award-winning book, “Moses - When Harriet Tubman Led her People to Freedom” and was delighted by The Lyrical Life of Joni Mitchell by Selina Alko. I knew Joni was a painter and her paintings became album covers. But here they are in brilliant color. I did not know she had polio as a child and went away to a hospital for more than a year.
Currently, on my bedside table is a book I checked out from my local library, The Gift of an Ordinary Day - a mother’s memoir by Katrina Kenison.
I was all in simply for the title. So far, it is not dramatic in the way we might think of drama. It is the quiet story of a woman and her family’s life in transition, their loss and rebuilding of home, familiar routines, work, and identity. I appreciate memoir for its slice-of-life approach more than trying to capture an entire life in one volume.
Such journeys are endlessly fascinating to me as the characters are always in motion through the cycle of life and death and new life. All of these stories capture a growth process in a real-life as unique as each of their fingerprints.
I like seeing a book cover when one is recommended so here is a visual list of affiliate links for you to enjoy.
These are the winter lessons I gathered from my life for you. Not every lessons makes these seasonal posts. A few are seeds already planted, but in need of more growth. Some will grow from my ordinary life and I anticipate some from Russia’s attack on Ukraine a week ago as well as the hopeful resistance of the Ukrainian people, sunflowers in hand.
Closer to home, we have just witnessed the nomination of the first black woman to the U.S. Supreme Court and that already has me anticipating new growth. Last night, I heard theologian and author Lucy Peppiatt speak at Portland Seminary. She commented in her thoughtful way with wild hope that women’s great strengths are their remarkable patience to be seen and heard in this world - and our churches.