Welcoming Winter

 I recently attended a day long retreat at Spirit Rock which focused on “Welcoming winter” – something most of us are not inclined to do!  The leader, Kate Munding, talked with us about how plants and animals do not resist winter.  They prepare for it, they align to its necessities and they become quiet or dormant.  She invited us to consider immersing ourselves into winter instead of resisting it.  Of course, this involved actually going outside into it!  And, even though I live in California, winters are still uncomfortable, cold and damp at times.  This happened to be one of those gray, cold, damp days.  She said we were going outside exactly BECAUSE it is cold and damp and gray – that is the point!  Can we learn to receive what is offered us?  Can we learn what it has to teach us?

We began by doing a walking meditation outside.  We were to pick a spot and stand and greet the small plot of land where we would take 10 small, slow steps in one direction and then turn and take 10 steps back and repeat.  We were invited to notice very carefully what we observed and sensed.  What did we smell and hear?  How was the cold on our face?   Could we sense each step as we took it.  Could we “kiss the earth with our feet” as Thich Nhat Hahn had recommended. 

I was surprised to see that there were dozens of tiny mushrooms growing in the grass.  And, here in Calif. unlike the rest of the country, winter is the season when things are green.  The air was cold.  But, for perhaps the first time ever, I experienced it as “embracing” and I welcomed it!  She encouraged us in our walking meditation to take “full body breaths” – to feel that your whole body is breathing – each pore pulling in the cold crisp air, and exhaling it throughout our whole body. 

It seems it is possible to experience  the winter as a welcome time.  A time to unfurl, to create sacred, slow space for yourself.  To allow yourself to be called back to yourself. 

I was reminded of the poet Jane Hirshfield’s wonderful poem, “A Cedary Fragrance”  I have heard her the say that all her poetry can be summed up in this one poem of hers. In her 20s, she studied and lived in a Zen monastery. As a monk. In the tradition of Zen, the monks arise at 3:45 AM and proceed to the meditation hall for many hours of meditation, interspersed with time for work and eating and walking etc. The particular monastery where she studied had no electricity. Windows had only screens in summer and plastic over them in winter. She talked about what drew her there was to experience life as simply as possible. She talked about being cold, hungry, uncomfortable, tired, etc. And, that the process of willingly living there for seven years gave her the opportunity to understand what it meant to “practice choosing to want the unwanted.” All of us in our everyday life are given “unwanteds” all the time. We have no choice. People die. We get ill. People get angry at us. Accidents happen. Imagine what it could be like, if we were to truly learn to “practice choosing to make the unwanted wanted.”

A Cedary Fragrance

Even now,

decades after,

I wash my face with cold water—

Not for discipline,

nor memory,

nor the icy, awakening slap,

but to practice choosing

to make the unwanted wanted.

--Jane Hirshfield