hibernation isn't just for bears
saturday musings #9 - we all require rest, rejuvenation, and reflection.
Last year’s winter felt awfuly bleak to me. I struggle with dark clouds, biting wind, and the death of the natural world around me in the colder months. Where I live, the seasons are very evident which is lovely in some cases such as the fall and springtime, but wintertime has never been my friend.
With the scurrying and bustling of the external world though, I began to wonder if I was approaching winter in a less than exciting way—perhaps there was a way to make winter actually exciting and less like a season just to survive. Although I haven’t read her book1 yet (thanks, long library waitlists), Katherine May has a book on wintering well, and she has multiple posts on how to approach this chilly season.2
Alongside Katherine, I just listened to a podcast/post from Timothy Willard3 about keeping our imaginations alive during the winter months instead of hunkering inside all the time to keep out the chill.
As mid-winter hit me in 2023, I decided that I didn’t want to just give in to seasonal depression and leave it at that, but find ways to rest, rejuvenate, and reflect for the year ahead. After all, life often functions in cycles; sleep cycles, menstrual cycles, the seasons, the cycle of life and death, the rising and setting of the sun, even things like leap years. There is a pattern, rhythm, and ritual to how God created life forms to live through. This is partially why I wish it were realistic for everybody to wake up with the sun and go to sleep with the moon’s rising.
Perhaps the wintertime is a sacred season. Perhaps we can save a special place in our hearts hearts for it rather than snubbing it or staying inside for three whole months of the year unless it’s the odd grocery run or driving to work. Avoiding wintertime is near impossible for most of the world unless you live in tropical climates, so the need to live through winter is just part of life, but maybe seeing it as a gift rather than a curse could actually be a wonderful end to a cycle and the beginning of a new one.
rest.
It’s no new thing that I don’t particularly enjoy hurrying. It’s really quite invasive and sucks the joy out of being alive. Ruthlessly eliminating hurry4 in my life has become one of my go-to angles whenever I think about or discuss the modern West and where we’re all headed.
Associating rest with a season had never been something to come up until last year when I started paying attention to the cyclic nature of being alive, and the true value of rest.
Timothy Willard’s post I mentioned previously was formative in me thinking through this in a deeper way. I think there’s such a distinction between sloth and rest. Oftentimes wintertime becomes a whole season of slothfulness, which is certainly not what I encourage at all. For most of us, we can’t simply stop our lives, jobs, relationships, and responsibilities in order to ‘escape’ into our seaon of rest.
The cultivation and continued care for our hearts, imaginations, and lives doesn’t stop with winter, but we can learn to slow down our busyness inwardly and outwardly, as much as each of us can, learning to relax into the icy roads, snow days, and the general stillness that comes with nature going to sleep for the rest of the year.
Rest is essential for all of us, no matter who we are. Rest is great, intentional rest even better. Each season has its own activities. Summer has going to the beach and volleyball games. Wintertime has ice skating and Christmas caroling. I also believe each season has its own version of imposed rest, the wintertime specifically emphasizing this.
Just like bears who hunt, work, and labor before the cold hits, I think wintertime for human beings is actually the time to sit back and allow restoration to set in as we recooperate from the long year behind us, with all of its hardships, joys, memories, tears, laughs, and dancing. We were not meant to run endlessly, and indeed we don’t need to, no matter how much our busy culture pushes us to believe it. There will be time to run again, but if you are able to, consider methods or rhythms you can carve into your days during the winter.
rejuvenation.
Rest allows room for contemplation, our physical bodies to unwind, our brains to stop taking in so much information, and for us to heave a big sigh—ahhhhh, as we close our eyes earlier at night, or drink a steaming cup of tea, feel the bite of a brisk wind as we walk through a baren wood.
In the quiet, we can begin to rejuvenate and live again. Leave more room for long walks, whispered conversations by the fireside, baking fresh bread, and sleeping in to recover from the late nights of work and play.
There’s a time to shift from a ‘work’ or ‘do’ mindset, to just ‘being’. Winter affords us that time to rejuvenate by focusing more internally to what we need for our bodies, minds, and spirits. It gives us a break from the hustle and let’s monotony set in. Oftentimes, we think monotony to be the pillar of all boredom and idleness. But sometimes monotony can lead to inner dialogue or indeed, a growth in our communal relationships. In order for us to discover more of the world, there has to be room to be ‘bored’ and wintertime gifts us the chance to rediscover the delights of the beautiful world we’ve been breezing past during the hustle of the year.
Similarly to drinking a bracing cup of black coffee, I think wintertime wakes us up from the rushing busy months and sets us up to be revived again. There’s something that puts our hearts to sleep when we are rushing, rushing, rushing.
Our hearts need more to go on then completing an endless mindless to-do list of tasks.
reflect.
For the past few years, December has my month to review the past year. My successes, my failures, but ultimately retracing God’s hand through the story of the past twelve months.
I want to camp out here for awhile, because reviewing has become such a large part of my spiritual formation.
Not only do I spend an exorbitant amount of time writing in my journal, praying, and asking the Lord to reveal to me what all of this year meant, but I spend quite a bit on going back through old entries from past journals. Not simply entries from the year, but from over the many years I’ve journalled.
I recall from times past what Jesus has done in me, the work that He has promised to bring to completion. I think that this is where winter goes from ‘boring’ to hope-filled, adventurous, and exciting. Why? Well, reflection should always lead to internal or external change. Whether that’s us facing a fear that we recognize has held us down this past year or reorienting our mindset around our jobs, review, reflection, recapping, should have an objective to look backwards in order for the future to excite us even more.
Winter may be the time to whip out that hobby you’ve been dying to get better at, or hone a skill at work that you know will lead to a more productive end result.
But looking back also prompts profound thankfulness for where we are right now, no matter what the future of the next year brings. I find myself awed by how Jesus showed up in every single area of my life during the year where I thought He was absent.
So much of thankfulness or a full appreciation, happens in hindsight, when we are looking backwards in thoughtful meditation. In that quiet winterness, we can begin to recall what the year means to us, where we desire the new year to go, what vision we want to share with our community and family. There is hope in reflection because we see where perhaps we went wrong, but where God can and does make all things right again.
Review lets us reorder our priorities. Lets us gather our forces to begin anew and allows time for us to establish vision, dreams, and hopes for not only what we want to accomplish, but who we want to be, and especially how we want to see God show up in our daily.
Reflection is a gift, a gift to give praise and worship to the God who gave us life for another full year. We are encouraged to pour out our hearts to the Creator and ask Him to enliven us for another 365 days, to show us what it means to know Him deeper.
Rest, rejuvenation, and reflection.
These are the three that encapsulate my winter months.
weekly journal prompt
What does your winter look like? Do you find yourself feeling rushed, trying to ‘finish out the year strong’? Are you feeling burnt out? What are some rhythms you can cultivate this winter to rest, rejuvenate, and reflect?
Katherine May’s Substack is wonderful. Go check out this post that talks all about The Clearing, and browse her content for posts specifically on the winter season.
The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer makes it in the top 10 for my non-fic reads. Highly suggest this, especially during the wintertime.