I’ve always found myself more creative in the quiet days of winter.
Somehow things get slower and more deliberate and I can think clearly.
This year I’ve had more of this quiet time than usual. The snowstorms kept me wrapped up indoors and every time I would leave the house to try and shoot some images, I kept getting pushed back by closed roads and snowdrifts, almost like someone was trying to tell me something.
So I spent most of those two weeks in January waiting. Waiting for it to stop snowing, waiting for the roads to get cleared, waiting for a perfect day that was snowy …..but not too snowy. And it got me thinking about Midwinter and what it means.
Midwinter is a time when things stop. Literally. The solstice is the “sun-standing.” That point at which the sun’s movement stops, only for a moment, before it begins to reverse itself.
At any moment when things stop, we must wait for them to begin again with no certainty that they will. In any journey, any life, there is a point at which movement in one direction ends, and we must wait to see what comes next.
It’s a feeling I know well.
It’s hardly a coincidence that in many major religions and celebrations, the saviour figure appears at midwinter, as the bringer of light. Heaven knows that when we’re in the dark, and we don’t know when or if the light will return, we’re all looking for a saviour.
Waiting is hard and these celebrations were born out of a desire not to wait any longer. A desire to do something, anything, to make things happen….even if it’s just prayer.
And, really that’s all it is. In the astrological sense at least, the light always returns, but it doesn’t sweep in on the saviour’s coattails. There’s no big miracle. At least not immediately.
Little by little, increment by increment, step by step, the darkness recedes and the earth comes to life again.
All the action in the world can make us feel better in times of uncertainty and doubt, but sometimes all we can do is wait, and have a little faith.