The Fertility of Winter’s Earth

Not to be confined by the darkness, but to be nurtured by the fertility of it.

The soul’s journey into the coming winter is like the cycle of plants through the seasons. As the memories of summer, like flower tops fade, and the stalks fall over and start to decay, there’s a self reflection, not a sadness but a turning to the roots. To put the center of one’s energy output not at dancing in the sun but in crouching in the earth. The earth provides just the right darkness to regenerate, to nurture the resonance of what was learned, to receive the roots of joy a bit deeper or for the roots that no-longer serve us, to choke off its blood supply.

If the fall time is the accounting then the wintertime is the rebuilding of the root system, of who we will become next spring.

There’s a sitting in the earth, not to be confined by the darkness, but to be nurtured by the fertility of it. To find a safe place to hide as the falling leaves cover us, a warm earthen hollow to huddle silently, calmly, quietly as Mother Nature has her sensual way with us. The surrender is to the force of nature herself, that force that wants everything which springs up out of it, to be beautiful. The surrender is to listen to what Mother Nature has in store for us, to not be intimidated by the grandeur of the dress she has designed for us to wear next spring.

The winter time then is the time to relax and allow our roots to follow their own path down into the earth, erect probing little tendrils extending into the truth of who we are becoming, our future selves that we have not yet grown into. The energy is not one of expansion but of receiving the very life force of the earth, guided by the truth of nature, to store ourselves up, to gather our own life force into the dense root ball that is our conscious connection into the core of this planet earth, to prepare, to lay low.

Now is the time to let go of anything that cannot be turned into a sort of fuel, or stronger bones or a nice, fat layer. We hunker down not to protect ourselves but to allow ourselves to be caressed by nature, to open ourselves to be influenced by her, to be challenged by her, to reveal ourselves if we can, to be ravished by her, in our naked sleep, the lightness of her touch, a gentle coaxing to open further, in our contemplation, in our every waking hour to know we are with her because once spring time comes, all that we allowed ourselves to feel, all of what we took in as the seeds of the beauty that is our full potential… will explode into what it can only be.

And when the first spring rains fall and the new sun comes blazing down, Mother Nature will have to place but to stand back and admire the majesty of her life’s eternal work.