Tag: #Winter

From my window, I can see the snow-topped roofs of St. Michael’s College across the street. When the sky is grey, the wintry world appears flat, lifeless, and disturbingly dreary. Other days, the sky is bright blue and the sun streams through the window, offering hope that winter won’t last much longer. Lately, it seems like the grey days have outnumbered the sunny days.

Normally, I don’t mind the winter. I like to get out and walk in the snow, to feel the sharp chill of the wind and to hear the crunch of snow and ice beneath my boots. But this year winter has made me irritable. I’m discovering that winter in the downtown of a big city is a different sort of winter. The snow turns grey and dirty almost immediately upon falling. The piles of salt on the sidewalks turn the joy of crunching through snow into wading through mush. It’s not beautiful for long. And when the days are short and cold, the lack of beauty weighs heavily on my soul. The winter blues have struck and I’m having a hard time shaking them.

Of course, some of this melancholy is rooted in laziness. Obviously, this city has beautiful parks and outdoor spaces to explore in winter. When I lived at Loretto Abbey, I would go to Edwards Gardens on weekends in the winter. I just haven’t made an effort to find a similar environment downtown and I’ve managed to convince myself that if it isn’t within walking distance, I don’t have the time.

So instead of making an effort to go out, I’ve made it easier to stay in. I’ve let myself get caught up in the busyness of the winter term and allowed my studies and other ministries to take over. I’ve let the things that I know sustain me slide a bit. I’ve prioritized work over well-being and I can feel its effects: a decline in interest and focus in my prayer life and in my desire to socialize with friends and community members, and, as usual, a slip in my exercise habits. For some reason, it always surprises me when I let things get out of whack, even though I know myself well, and I know that I can get caught up in work, especially when something interests me. I tend to reach a point where I stop and ask myself, how did I end up here?

Now, happily, there is a remedy for what ails me, a remedy built in to the liturgical year of the Catholic Church, in fact. We begin Lent this week, starting with receiving ashes on Wednesday, a symbol and stark reminder of human mortality. (And when doesn’t a little reflection on mortality help to recalibrate a person’s priorities?) I’m looking forward to being deliberate during Lent: to slowing down, at least somewhat, and to reflecting on what it is than I am getting myself caught up in and how God is at work in it all.

I have a hunch that this Lent will see me spending more time with God outdoors, braving the cold together and going for walks in the snow (and the mush). We’ll also spend time reading poetry together, following along with Malcolm Guite’s The Word in the Wilderness: A Poem a Day for Lent and Easter, letting the words take us where they will.