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Sticks. Naked limbs. After the bright-fire-within maple beauty of a couple of weeks ago, my window gaze falls now on nothing but gray sticks as far as the eye can see—a tangled mass of dozens of them. The bare essence of things. And I’m stuck with them until nature shakes herself awake again. How long will that take? And who will I have become by then?
Cold winter Georgia nights are softer than a whisper. Where has that raucus juicy cacophony of insect and amphibian chorus gone? Nothing to swat now. Nothing squirreling or fluttering or flapping or slithering. Only moonlight whispers now, that stretch out and nap softly in the pines, unhurried.
Easy, dull winter—requiring nothing, giving nothing. My body seduces me to give in and sleep it away. Shorter days second that motion. Sleep now. Slow down. Purge the excess. Focus inward and survive on what you already have—a hibernation of body and soul.
Why is it that I never emerge from Winter feeling whole? I feel depleted and atrophied by the heaviness of cold and dark. The slowing down should restore. The metaphor of the dropping off of my excess—weight, baggage, materialism—ought to make me feel lighter in body and spirit. Why doesn’t it?
This is the puzzle I encounter every winter—how the joy-oozing gatherings of the holidays give way to the waiting months, and how this leaves me utterly spent and wanting.
And in the nose-warming pause and steam of the sip of my coffee cup, I hear the Spirit whisper from somewhere deep, "They that wait upon the Lord..." And I will. I absolutely will.
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