It is Dec. 21, the first day of winter. Yesterday, the last day of autumn, boasted a brilliant blue sky and rays of sun that make the snow sparkle. But today, winter’s cold gray is pervasive and recalls the following verse of Wendell Berry’s “Window Poems”:
The foliage has dropped
below the window’s grave edge,
baring the sky, the distant
hills, the branches,
the year’s greenness
gone down from the high
light where it so fairly
defied falling.
The country opens to the sky,
the eye purified among hard facts:
the black grid of the window,
the wood of trees branching
outward and outward
to the nervousness of twigs,
buds asleep in the air.
As I reflect on the year past I am not surprised that, once again, it has been one marked by both hard facts and branching outward. In both, we have experienced the gifts of this life, which God so gradually reveals throughout our seasons. Winter is a season when hope can be most powerfully present. What appears to be death is but the nervous twig anxious to burst forth in the warmth of spring. Times of solitude in winter, with eye purified and buds asleep, offer wonderful moments to recall the myriad of ways in which we have witnessed the transformation of adversity into seasons of new life.
Throughout the year, CHHSM has been telling the stories of transformation that happen every day in our ministries. In the quiet hopefulness of winter, I encourage you to engage the spiritual practice of reflecting on such stories. They are the rich soil that will bring your work to full bloom and redeem the lives of many.
I wish you quiet grace and peace this Christmastide,
Bryan
Advancing the Healing & Service Ministry of Jesus Christ
