Before Winter Arrives…Get Your Act Together!

Living in a temperate climate means big changes, and also some major challenges. One day it’s sixty degrees and you don’t need a sweater. The next the rain turns to snow, your garden falling asleep sooner than you wanted. Now you have to layer up for outdoor walks and chores. Even so, it doesn’t have to make you crabby and glum. How about suggestions for an easy transition. Remember the aroma of autumn air, the sounds of birds high up in the trees, and go outside, so you can experience the most colorful time of the year. Yes, there’s that last blaze of flowers and shrubs, the flocks of birds heading south, the whip of winds sending leaves whirring around you.

Because if you in a temperate climate and are thinking of postponing outdoor activity…bad idea. Get out while you can. Use the inspiration of autumn to plant, rake, walk, run, head to the local park to watch a football game. Yes. it’s time to challenge a friend or your spouse to a run. That spurt of inspiration as autumn takes over, Halloween happens…which we have changed into a time of fun and craziness, candies and costumes. In earlier times, poorer folks felt time was running out, winter fast approaching, food becoming scarce. We can trace the history of Halloween and trick-or-treating to the Middle Ages and a medieval Christian tradition, the poor going to wealthy homes on the eve of All Saints Day, maybe in costume, but certainly offering prayers in exchange for food and beer.

SOME BETTER IDEAS
What do you do during these shorter, colder days? Sometimes when gardening, I think of finding a soft spot in the downy grass, lying down in the last square of warm sunlight. With winter close by, I eagerly smell the air, the grass, listen to the whispers of the trees, the birds — is that a cardinal come to serenade me? This a time to feel the receding warmth, watch the sun as it changes trajectory, longing to hold it back, it now speeding along the grass and up the trees, until I’ll have to crane my neck to see the last of it disappearing in the clouds. If only it could take me along…to a warm warm place, like California.
FIND A PATH THROUGH THE WINTER MONTHS 

In my part of the world, autumn has taken over, it’s here, it is change. And yes, the days get shorter, we are inside more, a time to to examine who we are, where we are going, and how we might improve. Life cannot be lived like the riot of spring where nature blows her wad, lets everything burst and grow. We enjoyed that fertility. But now it’s time to be more judicious in our relationship to nature. Yes, we harvest our fruits so we can use and share our bounty.

Certainly in the spring, when life comes back, we will have no fears of the future. But in the autumn, we need to count the jars in the cellar, the apples in the basket, the sins on the soul. We need to tidy our lives, draw within to discover once again how to live and survive and make it through the dark times of life. And how we can help others through their darker, harder times.

Final Thought 

In each of us is a light deep within. Sharing that light draws bounty, brings good things to us whether the world is hard-packed snow or dry desert. Autumn can provide a time for atonement. Winter and beyond can be full of the light of love as the grace of forgiving someone brings the warmth of reclaiming love. If you are feeling like all the days of your life are hard, cold winter, then it’s time to open up to those around you, to share the light within you. IT WILL BRING YOU HAPPINESS.  As a wise woman once said to me: “Feeling sad today? Then go out and help someone else.”  She was right.

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9 Responses

  2. Love this. I adore autumn and agree it’s a time of assessing and girding ourselves for the cold, darker days ahead. Still, I find winter cozy. Time goes so fast, spring will be here before we know it!

  3. I go through a sort of grief as the days shorten. It’s not the seasonal depression some suffer, but it is a form of grief, and I do my best to get outside before the light is gone.

  4. What a wonderful, beautiful way to see fall. And winter. A time of reassessment and hope, rather than a sorrowing for what is going or gone.
    Thank you for sharing your ‘light within’.
    You brighten my days.

    P.S. I, too have seen a drastic reduction in readers. From a high of 800 to 900 per day ten years ago to 30 to 40 a day now. It’s discouraging! And I don’t know what to do…

  5. Hi Elizabeth – Autumn is my favourite season of the year and of life. I loved the quote you included at the end – it ties in so well with my “Live Lightly” Word of the Year – bringing the light and sharing the light is so important in our world today.

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