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I was telling our staff this morning that I have a really hard time being productive when it's cold and dark and gloomy outside. We obviously have mild winters here in Galveston compared to others, but it's cold right now. And dark. And my body is feeling it. And it's really interesting that our calendar year starts when it is coldest and darkest, at least for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere. This is a time when we're supposed to be setting goals and making resolutions and establishing new habits; and, paradoxically, it's also the time when our bodies naturally want to rest and conserve energy.

We see nature reacting to winter all around us - trees lose their leaves, some animals hibernate, others migrate to warmer places. It is a time of dormancy and decreased production and suppressed metabolic systems. There's even some evidence that early humans would hibernate to survive harsh glacial winters. Author Katherine May, in her book Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, writes, "Plants and animals don't fight the winter; they don't pretend it's not happening and attempt to carry on living the same lives they lived in the summer. They prepare. They adapt. They perform extraordinary acts of metamorphosis to get them through. Winter is a time of withdrawing from the world, maximizing scant resources, carrying out acts of brutal efficiency and vanishing from sight; but that's where the transformation occurs."

Our culture, on the other hand, insists that we fight the winter, that we pretend like the seasons have no effects on our bodies and our minds, that there is just no time to slow down or to adjust how we live, even when our bodies are begging us to. Of course, some of us struggle with seasonal affect disorder, and this is not meant to downplay the seriousness of how difficult these months can be for a lot of people. But Rosie Steer, author of Slow Seasons: A Creative Guide to Reconnecting with Nature the Celtic Way, writes, "I'm certain this is why many of us are left feeling low in the Winter months: the world keeps turning and we are expected to carry on at the same pace, lest we be left behind."

What would it look like to let go of that fear for the rest of this winter? How can we adjust our expectations of what we might achieve in these winter months? How can we lean into our body's need for rest and recuperation and retreat? How can we tune back into nature's rhythms during this time and allow ourselves to live more slowly? The days are getting longer. Spring is coming. But for now, what does it look like to let yourself winter the way that you need to ?

-Pastor Julia