We Have Made It Through January
It’s the last day of January, and I have to see it as absolute kindness that I can bundle up enough to be in my favorite writing spot on the back porch. It’s raining, and I can hear the songbirds in the distance. I’m pretending they are signing at the thought of spring. I find myself longing for the time the dogwoods begin to bud and life begins to stir again. Not so fast. We still have forty-eight days until it is officially spring, and as I prefer to sit in reality, February often makes sure its short but mighty self is felt so that we do not miss the last ancient teachings of winter.
I have recently been revising Parker Palmer’s book “Let Your Life Speak.” It’s a short book centered around finding meaning in our vocation, but it’s so much more than that. I first read it when I was stepping into motherhood eight years ago. I have always seen motherhood as my vocation, and in many ways, I still do, but this time, I’m looking at it through a different lens as I read it. With a fair deal of mixed emotions, I sit here eight years later, wondering how much of myself has been diminished for many reasons, as parts of my life have been left unexplored and untapped. I’ve been asking myself a lot of questions. I became a mom later in life, and now I’ve got two precious kids, each with vastly different needs. I love being a mom—and it’s the most demanding and most continually refining thing I likely will ever do. But maybe for the first time, at forty-five years old (almost forty-six, but who’s counting), I’m beginning to ask if there may be offerings inside me that I have been too afraid to explore. I’m not so much looking for grandiose stages as much as I am directing my heart and my hands towards something that, dare I say it, brings life to places that have long been dormant. I suppose, ideally, it would not take away from the vocation of motherhood but may even enhance it.
As an aside, this is not what I sat down to write about this morning—but as I started to flip through my journal, I came to a page where I had recently jotted down a note of encouragement from a friend. She was commenting on a recent story I had shared about a room I had recently found myself in. I recalled my experience with her—how it felt to be in that room where people shared stories in a way I had never experienced. How those stories landed heavily on my very empathetic heart got me to think that if the rest of the world were willing to be so honest, we would be in a much better place. I added a lot more commentary, but her response to me felt like I was seen in a new way. She called me a “life narrator”. She was referring to how I can absorb whatever environment I am in, wrestle with the complexities of our human existence, and articulate that to others.
Of the many questions that I wrestle with is how and why we are all knit together so differently, how plucking us into family systems, and the reality of living in a broken and fragmented world shapes us into the people we are continually becoming. Then there is the question of inevitable suffering and why those seasons are guaranteed and necessary if we ever intend to grow past our own shadowy egos. This is a lot of what Parker Palmer addresses in this beautiful book I have been revisiting. He speaks candidly about long seasons of depression and about the very real ways that we will have seasons, and sometimes long ones, where relief feels as though it may never come.
A major theme of Palmer’s book is how to be truly whole; we cannot and must not skip over the times in our lives when things are dying and may remain dormant for longer than we would ever wish. I want to share a passage from the last portion of his book where he beautifully describes life in four seasons. Though we currently sit squarely in what the old hymn refers to as the bleak midwinter, his reflections on autumn are the ones I wish to share.
“The hopeful notion that living is within dying is surely enhanced by the visual glories of autumn. What artist would ever have painted a season of dying with such a vivid palette if nature had not done it first? Does death possess a beauty that we—who fear death, who find it ugly and obscene—cannot see? How shall we understand autumn’s testimony that death and elegance go hand in hand?
For me, the words that come closest to answering those questions are the words of Thomas Merton: “There is in all visible things…a hidden wholeness.” In the visible world of nature, a great truth is concealed in plain sight: diminishment and beauty, darkness and light, death and life are not opposites. They are held together in the paradox of “hidden wholeness.”
In a paradox, opposites do not negate each other—they cohere in mysterious unity at the heart of reality. Deeper still, they need each other for health, as my body needs to breathe in as well as breathe out. But in a culture that prefers the ease of either-or thinking the complexities of paradox, we have a hard time holding opposites together. We want light without darkness, the glories of spring and summer without the demands of autumn and winter—and the Faustian bargains we make fail to sustain our lives.
When we so fear the dark that we demand light around the clock, there can be only one result: artificial light that is glaring and graceless and, beyond its borders, a darkness that grows ever more terrifying as we try to hold it off. Split off from each other, neither darkness nor light is fit for human habitation. But if we allow the paradox of darkness and light to be, the two will conspire to bring wholeness and health to every living thing.
Autumn constantly reminds me that my daily dyings are necessary precursors to new life. If I try to “make” a life that defies the diminishments of autumn, the life I end up with will be artificial, at best, and utterly colorless as well. But when I yield to the endless interplay of living and dying, dying and living, the life I am given will be real and colorful, fruitful and whole.”
My reality right now is that the darkness is screaming a lot louder than the light. I’m being forced to face a few of my biggest fears that I was certain when they were only theories would destroy me. We don’t always get to choose how or when we find what we are made of, but I’m learning that where there is great fear, there can also be great courage—and when the light shines on the days I am walking through, it’s a glorious sight. It shines through words like my friend gave me that she likely didn’t even know the impact of. It shines through my hilarious eight-year-old and how my son is coming to life in a whole new way. It shined last night in the sauna with a friend who had me laughing so hard my side was cramping. It shines on long walks with friends and in a space I visit weekly with dear sisters who know and share openly about what it means to be human. It shines each morning on the horizon as it rises through the trees out back that lay barren in the winter. As Palmer said, if we allow the paradox of darkness and light to be, the two will conspire to bring wholeness and health to every living thing.
That is the hope. That somehow, the once-thought-impossible things we walk through working together, somehow, for our good. The things that began to die in the autumn, the scattered seeds, have made their way deep below the surface and are working in the dark. That spring will come, and the dogwoods will bloom, and new life will begin to emerge. It’s hard to see it all now, but as the songbirds continue to sing, I vow to learn all the lessons that winter wishes to teach me. Spring is coming. And, if you’re reading this, we have made it through January. I think it’s time for a treat!
Thank you, Julie, for sharing. I enjoyed this.