February is a quiet month which still feels wintry, but Imbolc, the Celtic festival heralding new beginnings, was on the 1^st and change is in the air.  Beneath the dead leaves new shoots are showing, crocuses are blooming and buds and catkins adorn the trees.  It can still be cold but our days are getting longer.

These signs of new life can lift our spirits.  But let us not hurry our minds into spring.  Let us continue to enjoy the bare skies, the colder weather, a season of resting and refreshing.  All seasons are important, all months have their special flavor, and we can find ours along with the rest of our planet. 

Valentine’s day

Valentine’s day and all is quiet.  The sun warms the tips of the houses and slithers in wet abandon across the frosty lawn.  The wintered leaves still stick in brown batches underfoot, some crispy, some soggy, covering the beginning-bare shoots that are poking through and preparing for spring.  The cool air holds the sun’s smile like ivy on a fortress.  The garden is full of shining surfaces as frost crystals, wet leaves and ice mirror the sun.  The birds sing gently to hold the silence of the air like a glass bowl and not to fill it. 

Every day is different.  Every day holds different surprises as sun and air conspire in changing patterns.  Every day presents new surfaces for our inner worlds to respond to. Today, sitting in the sun, there is a peace that spreads like melting butter through any processes of thought.  There is patience in the frozen pond.  There is openness in the bare branches.

To sit here for a while is to lose one’s own manner of being and become, for a moment, the morning.  It is to lose the distinction between inner and outer, that hard line of thought, like bread without a crust, soaking the day into every fibre.

So today I begin as I mean to other days, the gift having been given and received, the hope heard, the inner paths prepared.  This day is a valentine.  This day all is well with my soul.

We are in winter, here in the North, a season of rest.  All the seasons are different, all are important.  Can we find the aspects of winter, of January, that will link us to our planet, and that will feed our soul?  ‘The Bones of Love’ is also the title and theme of my latest book which has not found a publisher yet!

The Bones of Love

Winter is about finding a different kind of life to the one we miss from the summer, different colours of soul that we do not notice when full-blown and bright.  As the trees go bare we add layers of clothes to our bodies but the dark can lay bare our souls.  This is the time of year when deaths and breakdowns can peak, when we are vulnerable to the footsteps beyond our walls.  In winter we need to be held by the network of love our lives have woven.  Love that warms the winter cold and lights fires to burn the dross we have carried through the year.  Love that faces our mistakes without losing its smile.  Love that links us to our own strengths when we struggle, to friends when we are alone, to God when we are afraid.  Love that fits our size, the smallness we feel in the large space of world. Love that wears the clothes of this bare season, not a sugar covering that dissolves in the dark.  Winter is the time to find the bones of love.

For the Christian church, we are in the season of advent, a time of waiting in anticipation and preparedness for our celebration of the birth of Jesus.  Here in the North we are in harmony with nature and the nature religions, letting go of this year’s trappings and waiting for the new.

December can be a busy month on the outside, but this is an invitation to open up our inner world, to take time to focus on what is important.  It is a time to let go of those things that do not serve us, and to nurture hope for what needs to come.  There are battles raging in our world that we feel powerless to address, but are there any echoes of war in our own hearts, any hatred or anger or resentment or blame that we can deal with, so we can start sowing peace there.  And it is not without effect if more and more of us hold a vision of a better future, of love and respect, of toleration of differences, of collaboration for the sake of all and for our planet.  Let us hold hope in our hearts this Christmas season.

Advent

December.  It creeps in with the slate-grey dawn past the dark branches to settle with a chill.  It is the month of zenith, a cauldron for the dark, backdrop for Christmas lights and fancies.  It shuffles hungry feet inside and holds sway round the hearth.  It is the month of endings and beginnings, of waiting for the rebirth of sun that now holds our remembrance of the birth of the Son.  It is held by the universe of fir trees at our border, framed by laurel and holly and ivy.  The sunshine-leaves of brown still floor the fields with the treasures of summer as the trees prepare to welcome winter.  In the dark we can praise God for lights, in the cold for heaters.  Being without can mark our appreciation.  And being never without the fine-tuning of spirit since God soft-footed an entry into our whirling world we can lose that edge of need, of promise.  So this is a perfect season to tend an empty crib in our heart and prepare it – for God, for love, for hope.  It is coming.  There is a silent world outside, gently dripping in quiet concentration.  But it holds the seed for tomorrow’s turning, for next year’s burning, for summer’s yearning.  December is here and we are called to listen and to wait.

We are now in Autumn with cooler, darker days cheered by the leaves as they change to yellow and orange and red before they fall.  The green of the summer is chlorophyll that converts carbon dioxide to carbohydrates using the sun’s energy, so feeding the tree.  It is destroyed by low temperatures and as it fades we can see the other colours that were hidden by the green.  We have more red in the leaves when we have drier, sunnier weather. 

The layer of cells between the leaf stalk and the stem elongate and weaken with shorter days and cooler temperatures so the leaves start to fall.  It helps the trees preserve moisture, and without the leaves they need less energy to survive.  They can also handle winter storms better as winds move through their branches more easily, and the fallen leaves add nutrients to the soil.  Conifers don’t need to shed their needle-shaped leaves as they are smaller and have a waxy coating so lose less water.  The winter winds that rock the trees strengthen the roots ready for the next season.

Encounter

The wood
is not so much a place
as a presence,
each tree
holding space
under its branches

like a shelter,
the air along the paths rich
with their slow breath
and the trampled scent
of spice.

The leaves are light,
greens grading to gold
with the sun’s flicker,
softening the body
of each vista
like a pulse.

Rain is caught
by the canopy overhead
until it slides earthwards
with plops and drops
long after the rain has stopped.

One falls on my cheek
but I miss
the twirling leaf I chase,
kissing others that still cling
to their branches,
kisses soft as skin.

Bill and I live on the north-west edge of London so we have London clay under our house and in the garden which, as its name suggests, is a clay that fills the London basin.  Underneath it, and outcropping further north-west in the Chiltern hills, is chalk.  Between the two are sandy gravelly beds called the Lambeth Group.  There are other gravels nearby that the River Thames and its tributaries deposited before, during and after the last ice age when its course and the volume of water it carried were different from today.  Our ancestors, the people who lived here in Mesolithic and Neolithic times, apparently didn’t favour the clay and you find their stone tools in the sand and gravel beds, some locally where we walk our dogs.

They would have been much more aware of the different elements that made up their landscape than we are today.  The Icknield Way is a route that was old before the Romans came.  It follows the line of the chalk hills near here and extends from Dorset to Norfolk.  It gave those who travelled for trade or hunting or social/religious gatherings a route that would have been dryer than the clay and elevated with better views of the surrounding countryside.

Wherever we live, and whatever buildings or plants are covering it, under our feet are the rocks that contain the history of our planet and the history of our people.

Durlston, Dorset

Rock, solid fortress
against the sea,
jagged grey islands splitting
the covering carpet of green,
tripping the stumbling walker,
resisting the burrowing seeds,
reminding the visiting seers
that underneath the growing, greening,
trembling harvest
is the dense, unchanging face
of earth, foundation rock,
heavy and hard to shoulder
the buffeting weather,
carrying the load of life
that grows on its slopes.

Without its strength
there would be no waving grasses,
no wind-trimmed bushes,
no home for beetle and rabbit.
Because it is still, we can move,
carelessly following
the contours of its face.
If we look skin-deep at the land
we won’t discern the heart of it,
the weight of it,
that anchors us all.