I recently read an essay by Parker Palmer on the seasons. You can read it the essay (pages 9-26), it really stuck with me and resonated. I have always thought of the seasons in the traditional sense - a circular cycle
We think of many, many things in a circle. That includes living things, processes, all kinds of things like:
And one of my favorites:
But as I thought about it there were some thing about the circular image that bothered me - a lot. For one thing, you can't look back,unless you have the neck bones of an owl. For another, your view ahead is limited by the size of your circle. And finally, you are locked into one path, moving in the same direction over and over. It's a two dimensional journey.
And then it came to me. What if instead of a circle, it was a spiral? You could see ahead - a blank slate, an open opportunity. You could look through the center and see what was, your scaffolding or foundation. Seeing all that allows you to move forward into the unknown fortified with the known. We can know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that even though we may experience little deaths every day, scarcity and loss, we will also experience opportunity, new life and abundance. Life is, at the very least, a three dimensional journey.
It seems we are stuck in a
winter that refuses to give way to spring, making it easy to only see darkness,
barren cold. In several different settings recently I have listened to
people talk about darkness - a poet who is fascinated by the dark side of love
and life, the darkness we often feel when facing challenges, the darkness we
ourselves create when we criticize and belittle ourselves or others. I
don't know about you, but I often see darkness and light as either-or, good-or-bad,
opposites, dichotomy. And it would seem I am stuck on the bad side, the
side to be feared, detested, conquered, and eliminated.
A recent sermon I listened
to talked about paradox. I thought I
knew what a paradox is, something contradictory, opposites, a dichotomy. As with all constructed knowledge our unique
personal experiences influence our understanding, so I decided to look at some
synonyms to clarify and articulate my underlying assumptions. I found the following synonyms for paradox: inconsistency,
absurdity, irony, contradiction, oxymoron, enigma, puzzle, impossibility. Looks like I’m not too far off.
Of course, it’s no coincidence
that in the midst of thinking about how to move away from the dark side I read
an essay that forced me to completely reframe my understanding. What if the two forces were complementary,
not opposing forces, forming a dynamic system in which the whole is greater
than the sum of the parts? A similar
search of synonyms for complementary yielded: balancing, opposite, harmonizing,
matching, corresponding, paired.
Hot requires cold. High defines low. Gifts do not exist without limitations, so if
we want to claim our gifts, then we must do the same with our limitations. And the darkness is necessary in order to see,
recognize, and long for the light. You can’t
have one without the other; they are complementary parts of the same whole.
That makes me see the
winter differently, too. Maybe winter is
a time of dormant gestation, a preparation for the coming explosion of life; an
explosion that cannot come to fruition without the dark and cold of winter.
