I’ve been thinking a lot about this season of Advent. In a previous post I talked about how a prolonged winter affected me during Lent last spring. And this fall, I found myself dreading the soon-to-come snow, especially in an area that receives more snow than where I had previously been.
Many of the things that fascinate me like moss and ferns and water pouring over dark rocks, well, they’re all covered up by snow during winter. EVERYTHING is covered by the snow in winter. Which leaves me staring out at the ‘great white death’ that blankets the landscape. Last week we had 34″ of snow fall in a 24 hour period. The killing came and it came fast. And I’ve found my soul entering into a brooding period similar to Lent. It’s lying fallow, just beneath the surface, waiting in hope and expectation for the thaw. My Advent doesn’t last one month…but three (okay, maybe four or even five some years…depending on how slow the thaw is).
The Norse and Germanic peoples believed that ‘the killing’ that came each fall when the plants and shrubs lost their leaves was caused by evil spirits in the forest. Everything seemed to die…except for the evergreens. They believed that good spirits must then dwell within and among the evergreens, so the people would cut boughs and branches from them and bring them inside, hoping that the good spirits would protect them from the evil ones in the forest. So during the long, dark nordic winters they brought into their homes and surrounded themselves with vestiges of life in the midst of the bleak death that seemed to envelope them.
I’ve been thinking about this as we’ve been decorating our house this past week for Christmas, hanging bits of evergreen over doorways. Life, lying fallow, waiting for rebirth. Yesterday I went out into the surrounding mountains, trudging through the snow, and cut down a small fir tree. I brough it into the house and we dressed it with strings of small white lights.
A small reminder of Life and Light in the middle of a cold, deep sleep.
That’s where I’m at right now, lying dormant and mulling over things and brooding and waiting for green and color and sounds and standing shin-deep in a mountain stream. But before we wake we have to slumber. Before we walk we have to rest. So I sit here, acknowledging the importance of the present, but looking forward to the tangible hope of the future.
Sigur Ros on vinyl is the perfect soundtrack for times like these.
