Winter: There is a time for Everything Under the Sun

I am usually my most fatigued on Monday’s. Sunday does take a lot out of me. I know some folk don’t think I do much during the rest of my week, but I do. I have lost count of the number of times I have been asked after the Sunday service “So what do you do the rest of the week?” I know that sometimes people are just being funny, but at other times the question is asked in all seriousness. I will not begin to recite for you. People do sometimes ask the most obvious of questions. A young woman did come up to me in a bar recently and asked me “If I come here often”. I think she was joking, but you never know.

Monday can be a low energy day for me. A day when my mood is usually at its lowest and I generally just go through the motions of some work activities. I clear up from the week that has gone and begin to build for the week ahead. Monday’s tend to always have a wintery feel about them.

Now did you know that this last Monday has been given a special name, it is called “Blue Monday.” No not the song by New Order, but a day that is regarded as the hardest of the year. The Christmas spirit has all gone and we are right in depths of winter. It is dark, it is cold and there is little light around, Spring seems so far away. There will not be another public holiday until Easter and that seems quite a long way into the distance.

The day light hours will increase over the coming weeks but still we must face winter. January and February can be difficult as we feel stuck in the cold on these dark winter evenings. It has been cold this week, it has felt like winter. It seems like we have gone through a few long winters of late. This one seems as hard as ever. Already it is being called a “Winter of Discontent”. Life does seem ever more difficult for most folk. When will winter be finally over, so many of us cry. There is light, I can see it all around me.

Winter is not an easy time, so many of us want it over as soon as possible. We want spring and the new birth and life that it brings, but that is not the way to live and we know it. To live, always looking towards the spring yet to come, is to fail to fully experience what is present now. There is such richness in the dark cold of winter and we need to feel it and allow our eyes to adjust to the darkness. There is a beautiful wonder about winter that we would do well to embrace. There is a need to embrace and fully experience the darkness, the lifelessness and the starkness of this time of year. We should not wish it all away, for everything there is a season and a time for everything under the sun. We need winter, as hard it feels. All things need to properly come to an end in order for what is new to truly come to fruition. The beauty and the meaning of life comes in its finiteness.

I have noticed this in myself of late. Last winter was a tough time for me personally. I came through it though. I faithfully stuck at things and this year it is almost as if I am another person. Last Monday may have supposedly been “Blue Monday”, but I did not feel blue at all. In fact, I felt as alert and energised as I have ever done. I had a lovely day, just going about my daily business, noticing the wintery world around me. Molly and I went and enjoyed a good two hour walk around Altrincham and a long play in the park. She was six months old last Monday and I enjoyed marking the occasion and enjoying this precious blessing in my life. I also enjoyed observing the changing winter scene all around us.

Yes winter can look bleak and barren at times, but it didn’t feel like it last Monday, despite the world telling me it was “Blue Monday”

As Molly ran off to play with a gang of dogs in the park I found myself examining a barren tree. It looked vulnerable just standing there all alone and yet I knew it was alive as it stood there bold and upright. It reminded me of my own vulnerability and my exposure to the cold of winter and to the challenges of life, challenges I do not shrink from, even though I do from time to time feel tempted. As the last year or so have proved once again.

Everyone wants to feel safe, protected and warm, not cold, exposed and vulnerable. It is a refuge that we all seek, often it is a refuge that folk seek and believe they will find in religion and spirituality. This sense that we are protected and safe, but is it realistic? So often we seek protection from the troubles of life, from its winter. If life has taught me anything it has shown me that the insulation I often seek so easily becomes isolation. These attempts to protect myself from exposure only increase the suffering. If I have learnt anything in life it’s that self-protection just cuts you off and leaves you feeling all alone, once again.

One of the advantages of ministry is that it forces you to pay attention to the passing seasons. By doing so you learn to appreciate what each has to offer. Winter has so much to offer if we would but let ourselves appreciate it. The trees in winter have much to teach we who would prefer to hibernate. If I have learnt anything I have learnt that the spiritual life is about living openly and vulnerably, it’s about accepting the reality of life. It’s about standing their upright, arms outstretch in the cold vulnerability of life waiting for the time of re-birth and renewal in whatever form this takes, just like the trees in winter.

The spiritual life is also about not clinging. The power of our finite lives is in the impermanence of all created life. Thus giving us a time for everything under the sun, including death. The power and beauty of our lives comes in its finiteness. Nothing ever lasts forever. That said although our lives and the lives of our loved ones someday come to an end, life does go on and love does indeed remain. To quote Ecclesiastes 1 v 4 “Generations come and generations go, but the earth abides forever”

“For everything there is a season.” The wisdom contained within the book Ecclesiastes, particularly the verses from the third chapter that we heard earlier, has stood the test of time. There is good reason for this; it speaks an eternal and universal truth that generation after generation have found that they can relate to. The power of this ancient source lays in its ability to link we who live today with the generations that have walked the earth before us. We all of us have travelled many and varied journeys and lived through all the seasons of life. Nothing is permanent and nothing lasts forever. No one will ever escape the pain of life, but that ought not bring despair because if we remain open we will also know life’s joy. Yes, there is a time to mourn, but there is also a time to dance; there is a time to weep, but there is also a time to laugh. Again, the last 12 months have shown me the proof of this.

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.” There are many seasons in our lives, just as there are many different emotions. Yes, sometimes we can experience all those emotions in one single day, just as we can experience four seasons in one day. There is a time and perhaps a place for all them, for to diminish any of them is deny what it is to be fully human. Yes, there is a time to weep, just as there is a time to laugh and there is a time to mourn, just as much as there is a time to dance.

I have wept many times this last year and I have held others in their suffering too, that said I have also laughed many times, I have seen joy and I have seen how life continues on. Again to repeat Ecclesiastes 1 v 4 “Generations come and generations go, but the earth abides forever”

Ecclesiastes really speaks to me, it reveals an authentic truth. I love Ecclesiastes. I love is because it is real, it is authentic. Like the changing seasons life is forever changing, it is impermanent, nothing last forever. Rami Shapiro writes of its wisdom:

"The world revealed in Ecclesiastes is an impermanent world of continual emptying. Ecclesiastes calls this hevel. Trying to grasp something in this world, trying to hold on to anything in this world, leaves you breathless, exhausted, and anxious. This impermanence is the nature of nature, and because this is so, the world lacks surety and certainty; change and the unknowing that change carries with it are the hallmarks of life. In Ecclesiastes you spend no time longing for escape from impermanence, but rather learn to live well in the midst of it. This is what the Book of Ecclesiastes wants to tell us. This is why it was written. This is why it is still read some twenty-five hundred years later."

Eccleciates teaches me what it means to live authentically and truly religiously. That said it is a religion that is not pointing to Salvation beyond this life, but in this life. This to me is the essence of my Unitarian faith. It is not pointing to something beyond this life, but within this life. Which you can only truly experience by letting go of control and allow life to have its way with you, every season of life and every feeling of life. In so doing you will live the life you have been given, the ultimate gift, the ultimate grace. The next life, whatever that may be, will take care of itself.

Last Monday was meant to be the most miserable day of the year, Blue Monday. I didn’t feel that myself. I utterly felt the joy of living actually, as I connected to life all around me, as well as in my own heart. I felt as close to God as I have ever done. That is not to say I was turning away from the suffering in this world. There has been pain and suffering in my life this last year. There is pain and suffering in those I hold most dear in my life right now. I spoke with several of them on Monday. I did not turn away, nore did I try to fix them. I just shared in their pain, if only for a little while. This week I have been with many people experiencing the most difficult kinds of suffering. There is much pain in those I hold dear to my heart too. There is also a time to relive my own suffering in the past, I need to in order to truly empathise with others, in order to minister, to serve, to be with another in their pain. The pain is the price I pay for daring to love, a pearl of the greatest price. It is the refusal to close myself to this pain that allows me to do the things I am here to do. It gives me meaning even in the most painful suffering. It also enables me to know joy, even when there is suffering all around me.

“Generations come and generations go, but the earth abides forever” So does love. Something beautiful remains. We cannot escape the suffering in life. We cannot cling to anything even those things and those people we love the most. The generations come and the generations go, just as the seasons do also. That said we can plant seeds of love right here right now. We can walk side by side with one another, we can hold each other and bear witness to one another’s tears. We can also laugh and dance and make merry even in the midst of real suffering too. We can live our lives fully regardless of how many seasons we have left. And when the time comes we can let go of our lives with dignity and grace.

Remembering always that while our individual lives come and go, just like the seasons, both the earth and love abides forever.

Below is a video devotion based on the material in this "blogspot"