6 Things We Learned this Winter (2025)
Something about the good work of seasons, visual calendars, and unbundling our decisions.
In the Pacific Northwest, where I live, now is the season of hellebores and daffodil sprays rising in the fog. I’m never quite sure if these signal the end of winter or the beginning of spring. I need to slow down because I find my heart is like Madeleine L’Engle’s,
“I am too eager for spring. In my heart, I am too eager for Easter. But like the winter fields, my heart needs the snows of Lent.”
So before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s give that winter fog time to lift and look back at its work and beauty.
1. Words we could use to discern truth right about now.
Flimflammery means nonsensical talk.
Farrago means a confused mixture of chaos or disapproval, a hodgepodge. It is Latin for mixed fodder.
Both are similar to other favorite words of mine – tomfoolery and shenanigans. I often use these for fun and to make a point. But when used to avoid truth and accountability, they become harmful.
The parables of Jesus are the opposite of flimflammery, and he never confused goodness with anything else. He connected with real human beings, drawing out truth, love, and good action or tragically, other’s rejection of all of it.
Noticing the avoidance of truth and clear thinking, along with a tone of voice that accompanies such ways of speaking and acting, are rich ways to discernment.
2. Don’t live in “next-year country”.
When we keep moving the start of a whole project into an unspecified future – that’s next-year country. There might be good reasons for waiting to begin, but also scaredy-cat reasons. Or a bit of both. (let’s be honest) If we’re not attentive, we can miss the invitation to do some small thing now, and wind up living in next-year country for a long time. (I did this with my decision to go to seminary.)
That tendency has me giving my decisions a bit more attention earlier by asking a few more questions. What exactly am I waiting for? What am I afraid of? How would I feel if I never started this project, friendship, new habit, adventure?
3. Pull bundled decisions apart to see new possibilities.
Sometimes, we aren’t even aware that several decisions are bundled together as one in our minds. I have wondered about a project I wanted to do for a while now, and I have taken a few steps to avoid putting down roots in next-year country. Still, it seemed like I was once again waiting to know everything ahead of starting. Then, I remembered something pastor and writer Mandy Smith, asked in her book, “The Vulnerable Pastor,”
“Even if we don’t feel great about our readiness, God’s ability to work is not wrapped up in our readiness.”
So, I pulled my decision apart by asking more questions,
What is the invitation here? Is there more than one? Which ones sound like Jesus’ voice doing the inviting? Which ones have a different tone of voice? What is meant for right here and now? What might be meant for another place or later time? What small steps can I take before I commit to the whole project that might help my discernment process?
4. I am back to using visual calendars.
Part of getting ready for any new year used to include buying a paper calendar, the kind you flip with each new month. But as I began using my phone calendar and a planner, that tradition fell away. This winter, I found a pictorial calendar with story quilts that I particularly loved, and suddenly, paper calendars were back. I needed other ways of timekeeping, perhaps more in keeping with the photo diary I have on my phone - visual.
With that realization, I also began a new way of capturing each month in my planner with a stamp punch and old magazines left over from collaging. I still have a calendar in my phone with reminders and now a paper calendar again. There’s no reason to demand either/or. There are lots of ways to keep time. Capturing my life in visuals is life-saving.
5. There is good work in every season.
I recently co-led a contemplative retreat at a local monastery we called Seasons of the Soul. The deep value of naming our seasons - life, nature, relationship with the Trinity, outer circumstances, and inner landscape - was so delicious when done in community, I wish we could have all been there together. While I cannot give you the experience of a full weekend retreat here in this reflection, I offer this insight from our time together.
I noticed I’m walking with my dear friend Phyllis through a long season of surgery, chemo, and radiation. Our parents are aging. We are in our first year as two church remnants combined into one in our new-to-us 1962 church building. We are in the season of Lent which is full of lasts and goodbyes and regrets.
Our seasons are complex, overlapping, even contradictory. Some are brand new and disorienting, others call back to prior seasons, and still others we hold on to for longer than intended. They each do good work in their own way if we let them, even the ones we despise and resist.
Like Snow
Suppose we did our work
like snow, quietly, quietly.
leaving nothing out.
Wendell Berry