The Opportunity of Winter

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CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a Place of winter For the Years of Winter…

Now that the unseasonably warm December has gone the way of the rest of 2011, and 2012 is here, and with it the reality of true cold [minus 5 F when I got UP this morning], here is Ron Wetzell’s response to my musings about long underwear on 12-6-11. Ron is a long-time MN resident and thus is a prominent philosopher of the frigid. [1] Ron is a wonderful combination of the physical and the philosophical.

Here’s Ron, with his permission:

... and so, winter comes our way again. When it is part of what we have known, part of our regularity, we manage it the same way we always have, i.e. we regulate it. Buck up, boy. You just have to get used to it.

When it is something other than what we have known, it challenges us. It becomes the other. When we have at least half a tank, when the glass is half full, we can more easily let go. When we have less than half a tank, we tend to contract, to attach to what we have always known and always done. It is easy to be noble when we have it going our way; it is another thing to be noble when things go south on us. I have known persons who have been noble when they have been on fumes. I can only aspire and hope to be able to do the same.

What I know is that the Winter of 2010-11 handed me my backside: the third snowiest year in Minnesota, just under 90 inches. It was like Bill Murray's Groundhog Day, i.e. go to sleep, get up and shovel; go to sleep, get up and shovel. I now realize that my past attempts to embrace winter may have just been a variation of the Stockholm Syndrome.

I met an old guy (about my age) walking around the lake yesterday when the temperature was in the teens and the teeth of the wind had a bite to it. He said, "It's a nice day", to which I replied that "yes, it was nice to see the sun , but the wind did have a bite to it." To which the old guy said, "Well, you just have to get used to it." I bid the gentleman a good day, but my thoughts were saying, "Get used to it? I have known cold hands since I was 5 y/o, I don't like them anymore today than I liked them then. Why would I want to get used to it?"

It is true, though, that when we can change the way we look at things, we can change the things we look at. Here's hoping that I can emerge from the Post Traumatic Syndrome of the Winter of 2010-11 and be grateful for another opportunity to meet the challenge of winter - whether it is similar to what I have known or different.

Ron

1] Ron was a sophomore at IL State U when I went to Normal to be the minister at The Wesley Foundation, the Methodist campus ministry. He was one of a wonderful group of kids from Whiteside County, Ron from Tampico, Denny Heller from Prophetstown, Arlette Cocking from Erie, Linda Miller from Morrison. Little did I know then that in retirement I would live in Whiteside County [Sterling] and pastor Ron’s home church. At the Wesley Foundation he became the first of what are now known as “peer ministers.” He earned a MSW from U of MN and was until retirement the director of child protection services for Hennepin County. He now runs his own kettle bell studio. When he learned we were moving UP here, he made a special trip to Sterling to explain how to survive, and he sent me a Filson vest and a wool blanket! He keeps on his desk the motto, “The only way out is through.”

JRMcF

The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where life is defined by winter even in the summer!

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