As the daylight hours continue to diminish, our consciousness adjusts and asks for more grace and reverent space. Our souls silently touch the evening in the morning, the shortened daylight closes around us before our work is done. This journey to the shortest daylight hours of Winter Solstice invites deepening reflections and more enlightened moves. What wonderful awareness do you secretly choose? What speaks to this season of your soul that you cannot refuse? What new vistas will you choose?

As I sit here on this cold winter day in mid afternoon, I’m aware that it will be dark again in a couple hours as the curtain of light, prematurely, will be drawn for me. All of what I wanted to accomplish this day will again have been thwarted because I forgot to plan around these shortened days. I find myself caught in a cycle of confusion that twists time and space in a way I’m not yet used to. My inner rhythms haven’t yet made the transition to the shorter daylight hours and I have to drive in the dark again.

Have you noticed over the past weeks this significant shift in daylight and darkness? Have you made the necessary adjustments or are you, like me, still in the season of early Autumn refusing to acknowledge the shift in time and space? I’m looking at the calendar and realizing for the first time that it will be Christmas day in three weeks. How can this be? Wasn’t it just September or October? Wasn’t I just forty five and if so, how could we have just celebrated our daughter’s thirty fourth birthday? Why the confusion?

The wonder of winter for me is how the inner and outer landscapes seem to reflect one another. I’m amazed at how the soul mediates between the two, holding them together while reconciling the polarities and creatively imagining birthing the new. As we are in the world and the world is in us, our body is in the soul and our soul is in the body flowing in, around and through every season, every moment, every day. Winter then is a slow down time needing awakened attention if we are to embrace the Essence of Life.

In seeking outside ourselves for things within, it is possible to see a reflection that redirects our attention back inside. Winter, in it’s stillness, whiteness, coldness and grayness can turn us back to ourselves and redirect us to the hearth of our soul where the magic of fire and light are waiting. This image of an inner and outer hearth, a place of warmth, becomes a place of home and return. In our inner stillness, solitude and silence, we discover the Essence of life present in every soul, season and moment.    

To be here on earth is to befriend the world of matter and spirit, to embrace the visible and invisible, known and unknown, outer and inner realities. Winter calls us to lay aside our fears and risk loss, gain and change in all the inner and outer possibilities we continually encounter. This mirroring helps us smile, awaken and transcend all that seeks to hold us back and separate us from ourselves, nature and our souls. The contrast helps us see our own colors and hear the revelations of silence in the wind.

To many, these words and insights are foolish; for others they are filled with wonder and wisdom. This winter, allow yourself the gift of slowing down to search for your  Self. Listen to the winter silence and discover your true colors, hopes, dreams and hidden gifts. Allow the stark contrast of snow, ice, cold and cloudy skies to awaken you to your inner hearth, your fiery creativity and your soulful home. Our perception is our reality. The way we look at things shapes our lives. Wonder is within and without.

• When you find yourself cold and complaining; smile, awaken and transcend those thoughts to return home to your inner hearth. Feel the warmth within. . . .
• In this month of December give attention to slowing down to search for your Self. Befriend the moments. Become aware of your inner and outer environments. Notice the difference in your perception when you successfully accomplish these shifts. Rest and relax in this homing space. Breathe it in and feel the serenity. . . .
• Listen attentively to your inner musings and your outer expressions. Where are you finding the silence that soothes your soul? Keep returning to this space. . . .