CHRIST
IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a place of winter For the Years of Winter…
Spring and summer
are times of planting and of growth. Autumn is a time of harvest. Winter is the
fulfillment of all the seasons past, a time to pull all the scattered pieces of
seasons past into a final wholeness. In winter we still plant and cultivate and
harvest, but in new ways.
When you live in a
place of winter, where you dare not plant anything outside until after Memorial
Day-or your new plants will be only memorials themselves after the freeze that
haunts spring like a zombie craving the brains of vegetarians-you push the
season forward any way you can, so a place of winter is a place of hanging
baskets, that can be brought inside when a night is too cold.
The freezes are not
the only pillagers of springtime. There are four-legged predators, too, that
want to eat the fruits of your work. Rabbits and deer will munch anything you
plant, no matter how much you paid for it. So a place of winter is a place of
flower boxes, high on railings on porches and decks, too high for rabbits, and
where deer will not venture.
Gardeners in winter
years fret with the work but cannot give it up. They get down onto their knees
and cannot get back up. That’s okay. If you have to stay on your knees, you can
feel a lot of humility and do a lot of praying. But baskets and boxes give you
room to plant and dig even if your knees won’t bend.
There is a growing
season, even in winter, but it is for flower boxes and hanging baskets. There
are predators in winter, freezes and deer and rabbits, that will devour your
blooms if you put them out too far. Winter is a time to keep your flowers
close, and to be sure they are not vulnerable to those that devour buds and
blooms.
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! I wrote
this when we lived there 2007-2015.
No comments:
Post a Comment