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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in winter

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Winter Reflections

The dark of the year.  We light it up with holiday decorations and strings of lights.  How do we light up our dark corners and determine our next steps?  If you’re in the northern hemisphere, you may be dealing with cold, snow, and inclement weather.  Mother Nature pushes indoors, pushes us to slow down, to cuddle within the protection of our shelter. 

Despite all the grumbling, winter is beautiful.  Yes, it’s cold and difficult to get through the snowy weather but if you stop and take a moment to look ever the untouched snow in the fields or the trees covered with snow (well okay and where I am right now there is none of this) there is beauty and lessons in the season.

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Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs

I wish you a wonderful winter season.

May you get enough rest.

May you get enough fun.

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Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs
Darkness and the Winter Solstice

The solstice season is upon us, and it’s only a couple of weeks before the longest night of the year here in the northern hemisphere. It’s a season of darkness and cold, where we are given the opportunity to find the gifts that darkness brings. It can be hard, when the rest of the world seems to be doing their best to stave off their fear with bright lights, noise and extended shopping hours, but if we are able to push beyond that we can see the sacredness of this holy time, and the exquisite power that it brings.

I am mostly a diurnal creature myself. I prefer to go to bed early and rise early, rather than staying up late. However, at this time of year the darkness catches up with me, and by 4pm it is pitch black out there. My usual sunshine nature turns inwards, and time for reflection and contemplation kick in. But that is not all there is to the darkness that pervades my life at this time of year.  The sweet relief of darkness beckons me to release into its embrace, when edges are abandoned and we are allowed to float free in space and time.

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • John Reder
    John Reder says #
    What “impressed” me with what (or how) Joanna wrote is that it triggered the memory of the original Fleetwood Macs song “Bare Tres
  • steven rice
    steven rice says #
    Love it. For many years I was a second shift worker and the shift usually lasted to the early morning hours. Many times I would a
  • Joanna van der Hoeven
    Joanna van der Hoeven says #
    Hello Steven, Oh, how I miss the snow! Living on the edge of the North Sea, the water keeps the temperature too high for snow most

Posted by on in Paths Blogs
On Long Nights and Scarcity

Last week I traveled up to Northern California for work. On the day of my early meeting--8:30 a.m.!--I woke up in my hotel room at 6 and saw a pitch-black sky.

It wasn't a huge surprise (although I'd come from the south, where the nights were still a bit shorter). As I showered and got ready, though, and the clock ticked from 6:30 to 7 to 7:30 and the sky remained black, I had one of those random, strange thoughts that sometimes pop into your head. I thought, what if the sun just doesn't rise today?

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs
9th-Century Irish Samhain Poem

 

I have news 

stag calls

winter snow

summer's gone

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Preparing for Spring

Rituals for Spiritual Revitalization

It starts for me just after Imbolc, I get that itch. That twinge of restlessness and that eager feeling every time the sun peeks through the clouds. Spring is near! Mentally I exclaim, “There’s only about 6 more weeks of frigid temps, coupled with mountains of ice and snow! Hooray!”

When the feeling begins to take hold of me, I need to make myself busy. I need to begin planning my spring activities right away. There is so much to do, I often find myself feeling overwhelmed and perplexed. However, it isn’t a bad kind of overwhelm, instead it is fun and exhilarating to consider the possibilities.

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Leandra Witchwood
    Leandra Witchwood says #
    It seems there is plenty of time to ponder. We are about to get hit with another 10" of snow, so planning and thinking exactly wha
  • Courtney
    Courtney says #
    Nice post! It gives me some things to ponder.

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Snowlight

Anyone who has ever lived in the North can tell you about snowlight. Waking from an afternoon nap I knew immediately, by the light alone, that snow was falling. Snowlight.

What's most surprising is just how bright it is. Some years back at a Midwinter's Eve bonfire down at Coldwater Spring, the ritualists went on and on about how this night, being the solstice, was the darkest night. Unconscious irony is my favorite kind. While they talked darkness, we all stood there in a night striking for its brightness. We'd had so much snow that year that one could practically have read a newspaper by the ambient light from the drifts and sky. Snowlight.

In quality and color it more nearly resembles moonlight than anything else: like the Moon's, snow's light is reflected light. But moonlight comes from a source, and snowlight is ambient. In snowlight, one immerses.

Snowlight has a certain thickness, a nearly tangible quality to it. One thinks of snow as silent, unlike rain. But the Northern ear knows that you can indeed hear snow. It's a high, crystalline ringing, all those snowflakes chiming together as they fall, in which even familiar sounds echo strangely. The same is true of the light, as it bounces wildly back and forth from flake to falling flake. Snowlight.

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