Milt Greek's Blog: The River of Life - Posts Tagged "winter"

After a long and hot beginning of fall, the temperatures recently dropped. Frost thickly covers the grass each morning and leaves are beginning to change to yellow and red, several weeks behind the natural rhythms of our climate. My wife has observed that in the last few years, the seasons have been getting later, with fall, winter, spring and summer all beginning and ending later than normally. A few days ago, we saw yards with crocuses, the early spring flower, blooming, creating a strange beauty out of sync with the natural cycles of the year.

Still, fall crops are being harvested and we will go to the last produce auction of the season soon, seeking potatoes, winter squashes, beets, turnips, cabbages and daikon radishes if available. We have already canned over two dozen quarts of Roma Tomatoes and in our unheated basement an authentic German crock given to us by a friend has a hot and sour Korean Kim Chi aging in it for the winter. A Rye Stout is fermenting in pales for opening in mid-winter and the grapes we harvested and froze in September are thawing, to be made into wine for next fall.

As the Earth cools and the plants fall into a deep sleep for winter, humanity recognizes the season with traditional holidays. All Hallows Eve, the Day of the Dead, Samhain, and Halloween, among others, mark the beginning of the season of cold darkness and scarcity, a season where animals like us often face death more directly than the robust seasons of spring and summer. In my own family, mid-winter marks the anniversaries of five deaths in my immediate family in the past two dozen years, a reminder that for mortal bodies, the cold darkness takes a toll that is very real and, in many ways, an inevitable part of the joys of a full family life. Each in their own way, the seasonal holidays of mid-fall commemorate the season of death and recognizes our gateway into the unknown darkness. As the Earth sleeps and enrichens itself with the compost of fallen plants and leaves, we animals contend with hardships we do not wish to face.

In the past few years, a wave of deaths, injuries and sickness swept over our web of life with a power and affect like never before. In our personal knowledge of family and friends, extended families lost over two dozen loved ones, including my own dear mother-in-law and her brother within days of each other, with another immediate family member suffering a severe injury and a lasting health crisis. Parents, grandparents, older siblings, friends and tragically a young child all were taken from our web of life and many other illnesses and health crises occurred. I had seen waves of death and misfortune before, but the enormity of the losses were shocking, shaking our personal web of life and changing families and friends deeply.

Then, gradually, the wave subsided in our personal web of life. People who had fallen ill or suffered injury began recoveries. Mourning did not cease, but was lessened by happier times. The wave of deaths and injuries was replaced by a slowly growing wave of healing, pregnancies and births. Babies and young children began to take the place of those we had lost and we found ourselves once again renewing our lives and love of others while still feeling the loss of those who has passed.

As the Earth falls asleep and the scarcity of the coming season renews the season of death for animals, the Earth composts the season’s growth, fertilizing the ground in preparation for the renewal of next spring. In the larger human world, many are distracted by the political challenges, with sensitive people and other traditionally powerless people feeling threatened. What the media dominated by white males calls identity politics is really the politics of traditional power-over, with inequalities of traditional society challenged by the growing strength of women, people of color and other traditionally oppressed people.

The history of the United States is largely the telling of the struggle between the forces of traditional power-over against the growing democratization of society, with our own Apartheid system ending with a finally democratic government in the mid-1960s through the passage of the Voters Rights Act. Recognizing that their numbers are dwindling, the people who adhere to traditional power-over relationships are more desperate to retain their privilege, making their flaws more apparent for a younger generation of more liberated people. Just as the winter composts to make the ground more fertile, I sincerely believe that the challenges of these times will be followed by a greater awakening.

Meanwhile the seasonal cycle continues, the Earth slumbers and nourishes itself, walking into the dark underworld and reincarnating in the new life of next spring. We continue to prepare for winter with harvests of long-lasting storage crops and canning, freezing and fermenting food for the coming season of scarcity. We await, with great anticipation, the births of more new lives into the circle of our friends and family and prepare for the joyful, exhausting work of the season of renewal and new life. For those who prepare for the cold darkness, it can be a time of nestling in, introspection and the warmth of a happy home. In these hard times, I wish the same for all the Earth.

As the sunlight wanes, the temperatures have turned cold and we’ve had our first thin layer of snow on top of the yards and sidewalks. With cloudy, below freezing days, the snow remained briefly, with more snow lightly falling at dusk as I walked home into the increasing darkness.

“Sungod religions exult the growth of the mighty sun from Winter Solstice through Summer Solstice, filling the Earth with abundant crops and energy. At Summer Solstice the Sungod’s half-brother—a weird named Mordred, Judas, and other names—seeks to kill the noble Sun. Their struggle diminishes the light till the Eternal Sun dies and is born anew at Winter Solstice, once again defeating his weird. So humanity has walked the path of Sun cycles for millennia, seeing the divinity of the Sun.”

I recently sent this message to one of the most important people in my life who is deeply connected to the Sun and often slowed by the wintry cold darkness. I have heard that all people are affected by the darkness of winter, which seems reasonable since it is a time of dormancy for many animals and plants.

Thinkers and neo-pagan seekers trace the agrarian origins of the seemingly all-powerful sun god, whose warmth and light gives forth the abundant crops that humanity needs to survive and thrive. As millennia passed, later stories involving the death or near-death and renewal of long-haired men such as Hercules, Samson, King Arthur and Jesus were placed over the previous traditions.

This overlay of our historical moment onto traditional, iconic stories is a common religious practice, such as when modern puritans declare what God, Allah, Krishna, or Buddha would do in the modern moment and insist that only those who follow their interpretation are the sanctified followers of the long-passed messenger of god. For millennia, religious leaders have reinvented their own faith, making it contemporary and leading it astray from it natural Earthly origins.

In facing the times of darkness in which the Earth sleeps and we animals walk in the valley of the shadow of death, the answer to the challenges of the dark times is to learn from and follow the Earth. For those of us fortunate enough to have some connection to the Earth, this a time of rest, reflection and preparation for the coming seasons of abundance.

I have been gathering fallen leaves to put on top of the garden after I turn it over, helping the Earth compost the soil and prepare for the coming spring. Later I will sort and prepare seeds from the previous year, in my covenant with the plants that they provide my family with food in exchange for me preserving their family through gathering their seeds, trading them with others and planting them in future gardens.

We have been transplanting native trees and shrubs—Virginia Pines, Virginia Junipers, White Cedars, Dogwoods, Butterfly Bushes, Redbuds and Milkweeds, along with the non-native heirlooms of Lilac and Chaste Tree—during this dormant season to provide a privacy hedge and flower garden to attract birds and butterflies. Soon we will buy a live White Pine Christmas tree to plant in a family member’s yard to commemorate the birth of her and her husband's first child, making a special celebration of the season. So the cycle of the Earth into the cold darkness is also a time of preparation and promise for the future.

We completed the brewing of Irish Red for our Saint Patrick’s Day tradition with our friend and have racked wine off its sediment into carboys to settle for bottling in January. I hope to reach out to local growers, including Anabaptists (Amish), to supplement our supply of foods in our unheated basement, including more Turnips, Beets, Cabbages, Daikon Radishes and Long Island Cheese squash. I am slowly learning to live on what the Earth offers, rather than choosing to indulge myself with a myriad of food from unsustainable practices. My wife and I have also begun to spend time at the homemade fire pit she designed, warming ourselves and watching the fire while we drink homebrewed beer, resting and considering our good fortune during the dark times of the dying sun god.

To an estranged mind, these joyous, reverent acts seem mundane, yet they are part of sacred re-creation of life. While the religions of patriarchy have overlain these traditions with words, concepts and sentiments of the urban human world far from a life in harmony with the Earth, this way of life awaits whomever has the privilege of a life close to the land. The cycles of light and dark remain and beckon us all, even though our modern human consciousness may fail to recognize these ancient, life-affirming ways.

During the dark nights, the temperature has dropped and the short days have remained cold in the waning light. Despite the human-centered holidays of the season, the larger human world remains, as almost always, facing crises and hardships. In our personal web of life, the joys of newborns and toddlers filling our lives are mixed with the declining health of elderly family and friends and the threats of tragedy for some whose lives face challenges found hard to endure. It is a time of cold darkness with more to come, causing us to nestle in to our homes and find the good and bad that awaits us there.

The Earthly season calls us to live in ways that the hubbub and distractions of the modern world finds foreign. Rather than go outward, we are called to go inward; while we can still celebrate the good things in our lives, we need to look ahead, through hard times, prepare to make sacrifices and face the threat of loss. It is a time of giving up to the cold darkness ahead so we can build a better future.

On warm days, I have begun to turn the soil in our garden, placing leaves over the soft earth to prevent unwanted seeds and plants from taking root and allowing extra nutrients to return to the soil. Our garlic, planted last fall to grow during the cold times of winter for harvest in early summer, is one of the few crops that show signs of life still; otherwise, it is a time of dormancy for the Earth. During these times, I will plan the garden for the next year and prepare seeds for planting in the spring.

In keeping with our traditions, we are planning a solstice meal of local foods, which I hope will include the seasonal storage crops of Butternut squash, beans and corn frozen during the summer harvest—the Three Sisters of Native American foods. With this strong foundation, we will open a Maple Porter we call “Viking Winter”—a heavy, complex beer that we brew each Winter Solstice and open a year later. In these Earthly hard times, we are fortunate to have abundance and reasons to celebrate.

Though many consider this season difficult, my wife, who loves winter and nighttime, celebrates them and maintains a home marked by happiness and hope during this time. Years ago, on the Winter Solstice, we held a “Longest Night of the Year” party with candles lit throughout the house and many friends and family in attendance. Following ancient and recently revived traditions, in the center of the party was a table with paper for notes, pencils, matches and a skillet for ashes of burned notes. We explained to our guests that the cold darkness is a time of winnowing, of giving up what is not working, so our lives will have room to grow a new, better life. We invited them to write what they wished to give up in their lives on a piece of paper and burn it, allowing that part of their life to transform into something better.

This year, I reflect on what I’ve realized is one of my greatest failings—a lack of faith in my daily life. While I have repeatedly received good fortune, kindness and abundance and seen in small, personal webs of life that consequences often follow from life choices: that what goes around often comes around. I grew up with a lack of faith and an underlying belief that altruism was foolish. In my daily life, I struggle with worries and anxieties that make me less effective, less able to be a kind family man and to enjoy the gifts we have received.

In my growth as a sensitive person, I came to realize that puritans in my personal world had claimed the concept of faith as theirs—that to have faith in a spiritual world and positive spiritual energy like the Covenant of Good Works, one need to follow one of the puritan religions, such as Christianity, Islam, Hinduism or Buddhism. As someone who does not see humanity as having a special relationship with the spiritual world, but rather an equal child of that world with all other forms of life, these religions seemed to claim faith as theirs and not allow me to have it as one of my virtues.

Such lack of faith is common with sensitive people, thinkers and even mystical seekers, who see the corruption of religions used for power-over-others to also corrupt faith itself. How can we have faith in the darkest hour, when humanity’s history is filled with the mistakes of the past being repeated in the present? When all life and all things will pass into an unknown future?

Yet, faith is a powerful foundation to all spiritual life and daily living. Faith is used by puritans to strengthen their lives and move them forward. It is supported by their personal experience, where they see their prayers answered frequently enough that they recognize the power of thought manifestation. This recognition by puritans is a key virtue in how they conduct a spiritual life of their choosing.

As I have studied my personal life in thinker fashion, observing the smallest coincidences and seemingly minor events, I have seen a spiritual world in our daily life. While I cannot say there is a deity, nor would I dare attempt to speak for that possibly existing deity, I witness a spiritual world nearly every day. I don’t have to believe in it—by watching coincidences, I see it.

For me this Winter Solstice, I will seek to give up my cynical, anxiety-causing lack of faith. In place of this, I will seek to build a strong faith to provide a foundation for further growth and a more spiritual life. My wife and I are extremely fortunate, despite my own failings. My faith in the goodness of the spiritual world, long dormant in my life, is a recognition of the kindness I have received again and again in this hard but wonderful world. Building on that recognition and the Covenant of Good Works allows me to believe that in all of our journeys through the spiritual world that there can be a better, unknown future, even at the darkest hour.

This winter we bought and will plant a live Christmas tree, as we have for about a decade. As in the picture of the live Christmas trees and myself in the photo on my author pages, the trees have taken root on family land. This year, we will plant the tree at the home of family who recently brought a baby girl into the world, so the tree marks not only a happy holiday season but also the promise of new life amidst the trials of our human world and the cold darkness of winter.

Through our practice of planting live Christmas trees, we sustain the life of the tree and take part in the flow of life through time. Some live and some die, but as the years pass the surviving trees grow and provide food, shelter and oxygen to animals and the composting of their needles and branches to the fertility of the Earth. They also provide a place for children to play and beauty for all of us to be part of, even in cold winter weather.

The trees we plant will themselves give birth to young trees, forming a family of trees that humans call stands, spreading out from their center into the woods around them. In centuries and millennia to come, the family will reach out to other families of trees of their species, interbreed and make new families, just as animals and we humans mingle and mix our lineages. Lifetime after lifetime of trees will come and go, while the Earth sustains life into unfathomable eons of time. With that same hope, our family gathers around the baby we’ve been blessed to receive and seek to provide for her with the same love and nourishment that the Earth provides for plants and animals growing in natural communities.

As I work to increase my faith in the spiritual world, the planting of the live Christmas trees is part of my learning. In my experience, nature perpetuates itself through partnerships of what we call good works. Plants, insects and animals merge their daily lives, making natural communities that thrive on their mutual work of life. These partnerships and communities, called “symbiotic relationships” and “ecosystems” by scientific-minded thinkers, perpetuate themselves generation after generation, just as human families perpetuate ourselves in mutually supportive communities.

I know from my own, first hand observations that what goes around comes around. When I have acted harmfully, my harm returned to me. When I have acted kindly, I have received many gifts. The Covenant of Good Works is a principle that I have witnessed as a reliable part of life; forsaking it brings harm to those who seek gain without regard of others. Tyrants and tyrannical dynasties rise and fall in the covenant of bad works, in which those who take from others have their gains taken from them in crises and turmoil brought about by their own acts. This is as true for religions, ethnic groups, the wealthy, governments and political parties as much as despots and cruel ruling families. I regard these observations as clear facts of the mundane human world, evident in both the personal and the larger world.

Faith, which my skeptical, fact-minded thinking often lacks, is to believe that the Covenant of Good Works can somehow sustain our lives through the doors of mortality, just as the families of trees we plant will thrive for generations past our short lives. It is a small step to combine the strength of good works in the face-to-face human and natural worlds with the spiritual world I witness life through coincidences in daily life to a faith that through the doorways of death and turmoil lay a perpetuation of life and love.

In my fleeting, mortal and small life my mind cannot fathom the Earth and more than a few generations of lives in it; am I to deny myself the faith to believe in the wonder and beauty of the vast starry winter night and of the Earth as it composts and renews itself in the wintry cold? From a common sense point of view, faith in a benevolent spiritual world is as reasonable as recognizing the strength of the Covenant of Good Works in the vast mystery of the Earth and the nighttime sky. I cannot imagine my mind ever grasping the larger questions that puritan spokespeople claim they know the answers to; but in the beauty of nature and new life, faith seems much more reasonable than cynicism.

During the dormant season, I am slowly working on our family land in harmony with the weather. I am working to finish turning over the soil in our garden, I’ve cut vines from trees in the woods near us and we’ve transplanted our Christmas tree in a field on the land of family who have brought new life into the world. I’ve also wrapped leaves and wool sacks received from an Anabaptist (Amish) friend around fig trees to help them survive the winter. In the cold morning woods, I hear occasional songs of birds and see squirrels climbing on vines and bare trees and deer wandering through, all living harmoniously in the flow of Earthly life into eternity. With the cool weather and the long nights, it is a time of less outer activity and more reflection inside our home.

I’ve removed fermented Kim Chi from an authentic German crock given to us by a friend and will replace it with the last of the local cabbage, garlic, caraway seeds and salt to make sauerkraut. We are cooking seasonal dishes from long-lasting storage crops like winter squashes, dried beans, potatoes, onions, garlic and turnips and adding sauerkraut and canned tomatoes from the previous summer of abundance.

Despite all of these gifts, in the past year I have lacked faith and happiness due to stresses, too much activity and a lack of spiritual routine. As I begin to renew these practices, I am reflecting on the decades of my spiritual journey from an angry, selfish young man.

Many years ago, while deeply in psychosis, I had a hallucination of meeting Jesus. The experience focused me on facing harm I had done to others and how my actions were making my own life and future miserable. The experience, magnified by psychosis, helped me reconsider my life. It cured me of a young, narcissistic self that arrogantly focused my thoughts on my supposed virtues and rarely considered my effect on others, even those I thought I loved. This transformation was largely brought about by the tremendous kindness and generosity of spirit that I was receiving from people who had befriended me in my college community, even though they knew I was hallucinating and psychotic.

A couple of years later, after returning to sanity and on my way to buy hundreds of sleeping pills to kill myself, I realized that my parents would be heartbroken if I killed myself. I decided I could not do that to them. Instead of killing myself, I worked out three principles to would guide my new life:

All life is sacred.
Women are especially sacred because they bring forth life.
Men like me can approach the sacred by helping women bring forth life.

I found work as a computer analyst and began to volunteer for causes I supported. I learned to practice good works from meeting Christian Pacifists who were working to help homeless people and to bring about a more peaceful and just human world. When I returned my college community, I was inspired to practice good works to repay the gifts I had received. To my surprise, I found that good works—bringing forth life—resulted in me oftentimes receiving gifts.

At the same time, I met my wife and her family, giving me a chance to live my ideals of helping bring forth life in a family. This gift—the magnitude of which I cannot measure or express—revolutionized my life. I am grateful to my chosen family for allowing me into their lives and giving me a foundation for my life. I might never have had all this without the transformation that psychosis and loving kindness had given me. From this profound good fortune, I have learned that the Covenant of Good works is active in the webs of life I have traveled in. I have witnessed this spiritual reality in my daily life for decades.

I am not so naïve as to believe that the Covenant of Good Works is active in all human webs of life—the story of Archbishop Romero and the other martyrs of El Salvador is but one example. Those of us gifted to live within these fortunate webs of life are obligated to provide support to those who are not. At the same time, bringing forth life in my own web of life gives me rewards that I cannot experience otherwise.

From these gifts, I receive the joys of working the soil of family land, transplanting trees, turning over the garden and preparing for the season of renewal. During this time of nestling into our home, my wife and I are caring for very young children of family and friends, filling our days with the gift of new life flowing into the unknown future. By taking part in the Earthly sacred river of life, everyday can contain a blessing of life and love. This simple yet crucial reality, long recognized by the traditional feminine culture, is something that eluded me as a young man from a patriarchal background. By opening to the sacredness of bringing forth life, I have received gifts that only that source can provide.

In the slowly growing light, the winter weather has been fluctuating between very cold and cool, with mixtures of rain turning into snow and melting a few days after. Some people grumble about the weather, especially if they have to drive in it, but the children always relish the snowfall and sled down the steep banks of our hollow with a joy that adults often forget.

We visited with a friend who mentioned that she was “going slow-mo” this month, but we noticed she seemed healthy and happy. In the season of cold, wintry weather, our bodies often ask us to go slowly and relish the internal life of rest, introspection and intimacy with family and friends.

Our concord wine has finished settling in glass carboys and we are racking it out of the carboys, adding potassium sorbate to kill any remaining yeast and bottling it to age in wine racks covered with throw rugs in our unheated basement. We are also bottling our Viking Winter Maple Porter, brewed on Winter Solstice to open next Winter Solstice, and with this batch adding a little vanilla extract to one case to experiment with a Vanilla Maple Porter. We will soon be brewing a Honey Golden Ale to open on May Day. I have also made a garden map for the upcoming spring and will be separating our dried seeds from their stems and pods for planting in late February or early March. Even in the depths of winter, we prepare for the coming season.

For our Candlemas (Midwinter) meal, we are looking in our stores to make food from local long-lasting crops like garlic, onions, potatoes, sweet potatoes, daikon radishes, sunchoke, beets, turnips, dried beans and canned tomatoes. We are also opening a Rye Stout brewed in the fall to go with the wintry cold and the hearty food.

Candlemas is a time of looking forward to the new solar cycle. In the dark and rebirth of the solar year, I choose to work on increasing my faith in a benevolent spiritual world. Now I am reflecting on this choice, considering both its source and how I can strengthen my faith and what that truly means.

In looking at where my intention arose, I see that two and three years ago, our family and community faced hardships that tested my strength. We underwent a wave of deaths, injuries, illnesses and crises that was unlike any other that I have witnessed. For months on end, family, friends, coworkers and acquaintances told stories of loss and suffering. In several families, multiple family members died within months and sometimes days of each other. Our own family suffered with the others and I despaired, my faith shaken in ways that I now deeply regret. This cycle’s focus on faith came not from a place of abundant strength, but rather of recognizing my profound lack of it.

In the last twelve months, the season of our lives has seen renewal that is as welcomed as unexpected—in place of waves of death and illness there are waves of birth. Newborns and young babies are filling our lives. Sweetly, children born of mothers who have known each other since before they can remember are meeting each other in infancy and, like their mothers, will grow up as friends that have known each other since before their first true memories. Today, three toddlers of these Moms shared time together after their naps and were fascinated by each other, as if recognizing old friends just now becoming reacquainted.

In place of uncertainty and trials, I feel a greater sense of love and belonging. My desire to increase my faith is in fact a statement that my faith has been strengthened. The hardships we faced have been endured and our lives are once again turning toward happier times. It is, in fact, an easy time to say I have faith because it is not being tested; rather it is renewing with our lives. The lesson is summed up by something a counselor told me after a wave of deaths over a decade ago had caused strains in my relationship with my dear wife—“Marriages have seasons,” she said, speaking from her knowledge as an older woman married for decades with a husband and family.

Like marriages and the Earth, life has seasons. Waves of deaths and new lives, of hardship and opportunity, flow in and out of our lives. Our families, communities, societies and human world travel through these waves, all the while we alternate between despair and the joys of hopeful renewal.

If I have faith in a benevolent spiritual world, perhaps I can be stronger for those I love during our next time of trials. Perhaps I can truly relish the joys of the present moment, indulging deeply in the sweetness of new lives during this cold time of our year. During the hard times, I am often unconscious of the working of the spiritual world that fills our lives, like the slumbering Earth composting new life under the winter’s snow. My faith, whatever it is, is vital to give me to strength for the younger generations in my family and community as they flow within the river of life on this hard and wonderful Earth.

In mid-December, cold weather brought our first real snowfall, covering the ground and trees with a beautiful coating of white. With the natural abundance of the season picked through by feasting birds or covered with snow, we decided to begin our winter setting out of birdseed to feed the hungry birds. Running errands when I thought of this, I returned to our yard and saw a Morning Dove standing under the feeder where families of doves had gathered last winter. The Dove, too, knew that it was time for us to replenish our seeds.

I gathered Sunchoke, the last harvest from our garden. It was a huge crop, so I shared some with a neighbor and began to make new recipes to accommodate the abundance. A lesson from nature, like deer whose coats darken to blend with the wintry brown and grey landscape, and those who live close to the Earth like the Amish and other growers, is to adapt to what the Earth is offering, so I will seek to use the abundant crop in more dishes than usual this winter.

Our beer brewing season is beginning in earnest. We have bottled Irish Red to open on Saint Patrick’s Day and brewed a Robust Porter for Candlemas. On the Winter Solstice, we brewed a Maple Porter—“Viking Winter”—and opened the Viking Winter we brewed on last year’s solstice. It is a heavy, sweet porter that goes well with the long, cold nights of Winter.

As part of the seasonal gatherings, my wife hosted a mother-daughter reunion party for friends of her daughter, their Moms and other women friends of my wife. When my stepdaughter was in high school, my wife and other Mom’s hosted mother-daughter parties, which I viewed as important ways to strengthened their lives. This time, the gathering was an elaborate affair, with rich food, sparkling wine and English-style Crackers that my wife had handmade special for each Mother and Daughter pair. My wife also made what she calls a “tower of power”—nuts, sweets and cookies on several layers of beautiful glass dishes set atop each other.

Though my wife has made clear that I am welcomed—especially now that there are babies and toddlers sharing time with the generations of women—I have always stayed away. In doing so, I follow the teachings of radical feminists and others who explained that to overcome the burdens of patriarchy, women need “a room of their own” to empower themselves and strengthen the lifeblood of their relationships with each other.

For my family and web of life, we are in the aftermath of waves of death, illnesses and accidents that shook our web of life like earthquakes, ending not only lives but several relationships between those that remained. Following the upheaval and sorrow, a wave of new lives began, almost simultaneously as the wave of deaths reached its peak. These new lives have drawn our webs of lives back together, acting like gravity to attract us through the love of children to each other. Our daily lives are now filled with babysitting and strengthening the relationship with the parents and grandparents, much as the mother-daughter parties strengthen the web of life that has brought the new lives into this hard and wonderful Earth.

In this time of change, of deep darkness, rotting leaves and dead plants, and slow beginnings of Earthly renewal, I am considering what I have learned since the last ending/beginning a year ago. At that time, I began a study to find out how I might have greater faith. Last winter, still feeling the raw pain of mortal loss, with the new lives only beginning to take root in our family and community, I recognized that I have little faith. Faith is a spiritual strength and enables a person to leap chasms of hardship and fear and land unscathed on the other side of new life and new beginnings. For all its ability to deceive those who cling to it for denial of life’s hard truths, it is still a strength to be emulated and used for good.

Over the year, I saw the workings of faith in my own life; new practices for a person raised with a blindly skeptical disregard for the spirit of life around me. In particular, I faced trials based on risks we took to follow good works in the world of money around us—not only through charity, but also through setting short-term gain aside so that we could use our good fortune to aid those in need. It led to challenges that I was not prepared for.

In moments when there seemed little hope of things working out, I prayed for a sign about good works in the economic world. Though I once thought of prayer as being practiced by weak-minded people dominated by irrationality, almost as soon as I had prayed for a sign my family received a blessing, leading to a resolution of our long-term worry. Clearly, the spiritual world was responding with an emphatic “Yes!” Good works can work in the world of money, if it is applied wisely.

During the interim, an African American family, pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps and showing grace, calm and understanding that often eludes me, managed to buy their own home and move out of a rental apartment. We left on good terms and I was grateful that they had found a home of their own and inspired by their success and friendly natures despite the burdens laid upon them.

They posted quotations from the Bible in places in the apartment, and I asked for them to leave them behind, so I could understand what inspired them. On the inside of their front door was a quotation from their translation of Timothy, which read:

“For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.” (2 Timothy 1:7).

I reflected that these African Americans and their young children walked out into a world of hardship and challenges that I cannot fathom; their message to themselves and their children in facing a world not of their creation was powerful to me. I am grateful for knowing them and gladden by their success.

Though I was bullied and psychologically abused during my childhood by bigoted, wealthy whites who claimed to be Christians, I seek to learn from all traditions. During my recovery from psychosis, I met people who truly sought to follow the teachings of Jesus, rather than use it to seek power-over-others, as the hypocritical whites did in my childhood community. This discovery, and treatment for the trauma of my youth, enables me to be inspired by that which inspired these faithful African Americans.

As I consider this year’s lesson and next years’ spiritual journey, I hope to find ways that I can act on my faith in good works and in the spiritual strength of the Feminine. To me, acting in this way is the essence of flowing with the Earthly river of life into eternity.

I have learned that there is reason to have faith, yet it difficult to maintain when it is most needed—during our trials in the mortal human world. Acting on faith is to not be daunted by the fears of the hardships of the world, but rather I need to act in line with the spiritual strength of the Earthly and human world. How to do this without bringing harm to myself or the family that needs me, that is the question to ponder in the sleepy darkness of the winter nights.

The long nights and short days of the early winter season have been unusually warm and with little snow, causing concerned people—mainly Moms—to worry about the future in a world of global warming while others—mainly men—have expressed appreciation for the unnaturally warm temperatures. As the days lengthened, it seemed that there would be hardly any snow for the children to sled and make snowmen in, threatening not only the winter play of the young but the crops of local harvesters of Maple syrup and orchard owners who rely on the steady winter weather to slowly wake their trees from their dormant sleep.

Midwinter came with little change in the warm weather and we had our midwinter meal, opening a Robust Porter bottled only a few weeks before. Having been busy with other things, we didn’t give the porter enough time in the bottle and it was a little harsh at first. A week later, the porter has mellowed and is better with the extra time.

Scurrying for time, we also brewed a Honey Golden on Candlemas, planning to open the ale in the longer, warmer days of May. We hardly had time for the brewing, with our lives full of activities, including caring for the young toddlers who fill our days with joy. With another young life soon to come into our family, my wife has been working steadily on a beautiful quilt with pastels of blue and pearl and pictures of furry, young animals of the woods.

My wife wished deeply for snow, to allow the young toddlers a chance to play and to enjoy the beauty of winter. Soon after midwinter, her wish manifested, with a steady, slow falling of snow that coated the ground and trees in a blanket several inches thick. We walked in the beauty of the day, being sure to feed the birds that rely on our feeder for a steady supply of winter seeds.

Babysitting for two young toddlers, my wife told me that the one and a half year old was fascinated by the sight of the birds at the feeder, watching them with amazement and awe as they flew about. The young lives, if taught that the Earth contains sacred life that works in harmonious balance with itself, will have their natural love of life extend to the Earth on which humanity depends. If taught, on the other hand, that humanity has been given dominion over the Earth and may do to the natural communities whatever we seek, the suicidal hubris of patriarchy to enslave the Earth—who holds our destiny in its hands—will continue to its inevitable, karmic end.

This concept of patriarchal culture—that the urban, human god of power-over-others holds the fate of the Earth which surrounds it—seems to me deeply rooted in our daily thinking. Scientific thinkers, scoffing at the superstitious thinking of puritans, will still look at a small, wooded area and consider it to something to be destroyed and built upon, rather than a place of joy and beauty where sustainable natural communities can thrive. The urban, human god rewards those who gain money, power-over-others and prestige, none of which can be provided by natural communities that humanity depends upon. Scientific thinkers, for all the claims of objectivity, are oftentimes the servants of money-chasers and violent men who perpetuate the ways of the urban god.

In the face of patriarchy-as-normal, filled with ignorance and rewards of wealth and power-over-others for betrayal of the essential principles of life, having faith can seem as foolish. Acting on faith, by taking risks and pushing the limits of what seems possible and safe, seems akin to devoting ourselves to making snowmen who will melt rapidly in the warming air. If the urban god of power-over holds sway over the Earth and all life on it, how do we dare defy it by acting on our faith in good works?

I cannot claim the virtues of those who have acted successfully on their faith, risking livelihood for the chance to make the human world a better place. However, during the midwinter, after months of discussion with my wife, I resolved to seek a career doing good works, which, naturally, will pay less than my trivial work as a computer analyst. Rushing about to make the change, I went headlong into the uncertainty of commitments to leave my job sooner than later, so that I could take advantage of possibilities.

Time will tell if the efforts will result in a successful transition to a better career. Acting on faith, however, has help calm my inner self and relieve my conscience from an often-repeated refrain that while others suffer, I live in material abundance while contributing little to the essential tasks of life. It is these essential tasks—caring for children, being part of a community that supports parents and others in that work, working for harmony between human communities, and moving toward sustainability with the natural communities that will determine the fate of humanity—that are the center of the river of Earthly life flowing into eternity. My own actions, to try to increase my contribution to the essential good works of life, might seem senseless and foolhardy to those following the urban god of money and power-over. In my heart, however, I know this choice is long overdue.

In the quiet time after I made commitments to pursue this path, when the rushing about of changing directions was finished, I took time to make a wintertime favorite of my dear, late mother-in-law. With the snow of mid-winter finally falling, I gathered sunchoke, onions and potatoes from winter storage in our basement, combined them with cream and vegetable stock to make a thick puree that would warm our bones in the delightfully cold winter weather. Serving it with a salad including local lettuces and Arugula grown in a high tunnel greenhouse, sweet onions stored from the summer, and local Feta Cheese and with our robust porter, my wife and enjoyed the warmth of our home in midwinter.

Soon after we made the soup, the parents of the toddler in our family called and said that the Mom was sick with flu, the baby was sick again and the father was taking time off work to care for them. Knowing they felt overburdened and exhausted, we dropped off soup, salad and a few other items to lighten their load. The next day, the Mom and baby were feeling better and we babysat the young one while the Mom rested and the father worked. In these small ways, the essential good works of life makes our lives meaningful. Considering the strength of love I experience in our home life, having the courage to pursue a career of good works does not seem foolish; rather, it seems the path that life teaches me to follow.

Since mid-winter, we have had colder temperatures with fleeting, light snow, quickly melting in the following warmth. While cooler than the first half of winter, February has been marked by short cold spells with warm, rainy weather quickly cycling afterwards. Without the normal extended cold, our winter has been more like a rainy season than our normal winter season.

I encountered an old friend of my wife’s in a store and she said that her allergies, which normally lessen in the cold of winter, had acted up much more this year. We agreed that without the normal cold of the season to limit growth, the molds and other sources of allergies were more active this year. As with all things involving the Earth, changes in climate are much more profound than simply the warming of the seasons.

I have noticed carrots at our local Farmer’s Market, which diminished in past winters. The growers, hearty and resourceful, are adapting to the changing climate even as skeptics deny the reality about us. At the same time, local greens grown in high tunnel greenhouses have flourished and, as always, apples harvested in fall and kept in near-freezing temperatures in coolers are still in supply at the market. Crisp, flavorful and moist, the apples are far superior to those at supermarkets at any time of year. The greens, likewise, are fresh and flavorful, a testament to the skill of the local growers.

As during previous winters, we bottled our wine made from Concord grapes harvested at the orchard where our apples also come from. For a decade, we have traveled to the orchard in September to gather the luscious, sweet bluish black gems from the vines and process them into wine. This coming fall, as in previous years, we will open this year’s harvest and enjoy the simple pleasures of life.

Despite the warm winter, the birds began to sing territorial songs on sunny days around midwinter, as they have in previous years. The males call out, “I have a place for us, come join me, let us fall in love, build a home and raise our children in this wonderful world.” Like so many that live in balance with the natural community around them, birds focus on the simple joys of life as they flow with the Earth in the river of life.

My wife has been using tomatoes we canned last fall as the base for sauces for pasta that we take to the young parents in our family as part of the support we give to them. Their child, some sixteen months old, delights everyone with her spattering of words and her wonder at all the ordinary parts of life that adults take for granted. Meanwhile, the parents scramble to care for their child, earn the income they need to live, and do the chores of a household. Fortunately, they have family and friends nearby, so they receive some of the essential support they need.

Importantly, another new life has been brought into our family. A boy, barely seven pounds, delivered by another young woman in our family, bringing grandparents, great-grandparents and others into an orbit around a new center of life. My wife, who has made a number of quilts over the years, worked for hours on end to create a beautiful quilt for the baby, completing it just a couple of days prior to the birth.

After the parents and baby returned home from the hospital, my wife and I drove up to the parents’ new home and, along with grandmothers, brought food to help with the family’s needs. My wife gave the new Mom the quilt in a colorful gift bag covered with colored tissue paper, with the underside of the quilt—where the baby’s initials and birthdate were embroidered in a corner—showing out. The mother marveled at the underside of the quilt, which is a beautiful pastel fabric with images of furry baby animals and a diamond-shaped patchwork center of blue and tan panels, then turned the quilt over to find a remarkably beautiful patchwork of hand-sewn pastel pieces. Furry baby animals—rabbits, baby bears looking like teddy bears, and foxes—adorned the top. The young Mom, weary from a hard labor and sleepless nights, cried with joy at the site of the work of love for her and her child.

A few days later, my wife and I made a meal for the other young parents in our family. Using our winter stores of food, I pulled the white tendrils of stalks from the wrinkled potatoes I have kept in the paper bag in our unheated cellar since last fall and cleaned and chopped the potatoes for soup. I also used onions bought at the produce auction in October, cutting away some rotting pieces and chopping up the stems of new growth that shoot up from the center of the bulb. Adding soaked and boiled beans from our garden and a local mill, I made a thick cream of potato and bean soup, pureeing some of the vegetables and adding cream and flour to thicken it. My wife made a tart from local apples and we added a salad of local Arugula and Spinach. We took the meal to the young parents and helped babysit their young daughter while the parents did chores.

As the younger couples among our family and friends have brought new life into the world, our lives have become more and more about the care of young ones. We are watching these innocent lives grow and expand, feeling joy in sharing their love of life. The nearly four year old child of a close friend who my wife has babysat since he was three months old is continuing to grow in ability and personality. Recently, he completed a major accomplishment for his age: with only a little help from me, he constructed a large multi-story house from magnetic plastic tiles. I took a picture of the house to commemorate his achievement.

The children in our lives are tremendously vulnerable, as all young lives are, and wholly dependent on the family and community around them. Fortunately, these children have many family and friends around their parents, providing extra help with these all important young lives. This essential community to help the parents is part of the river of Earthly life flowing into the unknowable future, part of eons of generations that have lived on the Earth in the past. Taking part in this river of good works by bringing forth life is like sipping the cold, crisp water of a deep spring, quenching the thirst for life of all but the most hardened spirits.

During this time of deep spiritual satisfaction, I found myself encountering a version of my younger self and, in seeing my own youthful failings, thought of my wife’s philosophy that “most people just want to live, but some people want to rule.” Through work I am beginning in the community around these young lives, a meeting was arranged between myself and a young college graduate who had started at the university in town five years ago. The young man, who had stayed in our community for a year after he graduated, is hard-working, analytically intelligent, and very political in his approach to life, much as I was prior to psychosis knocking me off my college career path.

The young man has volunteered extensively with local political leaders and on various community boards, building up his resume and pushing for political solutions through his connections at the top of local hierarchies. He sincerely believes his efforts will improve our community and he is gaining influence with leaders, all the while having little contact with ordinary people in our community, except when he canvasses for political campaigns.

I met with him to discuss a plan he has been advocating with his political connections, but the meeting ended quickly and badly. I asked him how long he intended to stay in the community he is working so hard to affect and he indicated that he might leave within six to twelve months. I argued with him that if he wanted to affect a community he should do the work he is advocating be done and live with the consequences of his own actions.

I advocate this with everyone, since protection from the consequences of our actions results in narcissism. Hierarchies, carrying out the will of people who rule, protect the rulers from these consequences, leading to spiritual corruption perpetuated by the covenant of bad works. The young man, who sincerely has good intentions, is using his privilege as a well-to-do, well-educated and ambitious white man to seek to change a community he is not really a part of nor is likely to stay in for long. Like my younger self prior to psychosis, he is seeking to rule over people for their own good, to use the principalities of power-over-others to enact his will, but will never truly know the effect of his actions.

As I came to understand his view, I should have immediately asked him to leave. Instead, I became angry and insulted him, resulting the meeting ending quickly, much to my satisfaction. After the meeting I reached out to others more connected to the political and organizational hierarchy and found he was fairly well known to leaders, but unknown to ordinary people in our community.

In doing this, I realized clearly how foreign the views of ordinary people who “simply want to live” are to the hierarchies of “people who want to rule.” In our human world, the idea that leaders should live with the consequences of their actions is simply impractical. How can leaders of hierarchies—affecting communities throughout the world—possibly know their effect in meaningful terms? Yet how can anyone seek to control their own fate without interacting with the hierarchies that channel money and power-over-others?

One of the most faithful things a person can do it to support our families and communities in bringing forth life without seeking to control other communities and other people. Can ordinary people like us who simply want to live avoid being the tools of people who want to rule while also avoiding being their victims? In the millennia of patriarchy, the worship of the man with power-over-others has become deeply embedded in our culture; our larger culture and traditions knows little else. Our culture’s solution is for the righteous to mount these hierarchies and right the wrongs of others. Paths into the higher reaches of these hierarchies are walked by young people with good intentions and an ignorance of corruption that power-over-others breeds in those who the urban human god gives it to, perpetuating our sad history.

As a young person, my own journey toward the centers of power-over-others was aborted by my psychosis. In looking at my younger self, I tend to see not only the good intentions that I spoke so passionately about, but also my unconscious desire for power-over-others. From my older vantage point, thickly embedded in a family and small community that is seeking to bring forth and celebrate life, I am grateful that my early failures led me to people who just want to live and away from people who want to rule.

The slow, steady growth of darkness of the approaching winter has made for two snowfalls in December, giving beauty to the cold season. Once the solstice passes, the changing season will slowly bring new light even as the winter, lagging behind the light, will likely become colder and harsher before the awakening of spring.

We continue to feed birds and squirrels in the winter feeders, providing some food during the scarce season. On days where our granddaughter sleeps over, the toddler delights in feeding the birds and watching as they and a squirrel or two gathers to eat.

“Look, it’s Squirrel Nutkin!” I tell her, referring to a mischievous character from the young girl’s Beatrix Potter stories. Our granddaughter goes to the window and watches with delight, expressing her glee by chattering mixed with high-pitched squeals of joy.

Some older people in families, remembering disappointments about losing the enchantment of the Earth when they discovered that Santa Claus was a fake and forgery manufactured by deceitful parents, play down the magical world that children seem to live in. Having never really believed in Santa Claus myself, I am on the other end of the spectrum and excitedly tell the impressionable young one fable after fable of Santa Claus, elves, reindeer, and sleighs flying through beautiful, starry skies onto snow-covered rooftops.

“It’s easy to get into the spirit of Christmas when you have children in your life,” I told my wife, who, as usual, was busy with many Christmas decorating, craft, and baking projects.

”Um-hmm,” she replied, “It sure is,” diplomatically failing to point out that she shares the joy of the holiday with our family through hard work making the season special for all of us, while I often retreat into journaling and self-reflection. It is that work of family, hearth and home that makes so much possible in our lives, yet she has not been paid a dime for all her decades of devotion.

Like the traditional roles of family in our culture, my contribution to the season includes providing money from work in the outside world, small help with planning and a little baking. Since Christmas is, more than any other Christian holiday, a celebration of children, it is inevitable that women in our culture are more apt to focus it than men.

Like my own slow centering on Christmas, in Western history the holiday seems to be one way that patriarchy has begun to awaken to the joys of children. Beginning with an ennoblement of a special child deserving gifts and providing humanity with tremendous blessings, the birth of the son of Christmas, occurring at the rebirth of the Sun, deifies a child. So children are to old people such as my wife and I, who find solace and purpose in the joys of a grandchild while we face the loss of loved ones in our families and friends.

The story of the birth of a god at Winter Solstice, only to suffer death later in the year, is a retelling of stories of solar and human birth-death-rebirth stories like Hercules and Samson, as was common in the ancient world. The ennoblement of the child in the story of Jesus is an important improvement over what the prophets of the Babylonian Captivity, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, rightly called the abomination of child sacrifice that the Hebrews, like many warfare societies, practiced to please their god. This ennoblement of the sacrificial lamb, slowly growing in our history like the light following the darkness of the solstice, brought with it gifts not to a church or a shrine, but to our own children and families. Patriarchs have slowly, unconsciously begun recognized to recognize the sacredness of the lives of those in our families, celebrating our love for them in the indulgence of the magic of Christmas. In doing so, patriarchs and patriarchy have begun to awaken to one of the many long-neglected joyous responsibilities of the Feminine.

Following a hodgepodge of traditions and rituals, ranging from stockings and Christmas trees to following the death and rebirth of sunlight at the solstice, I consider the intention I make for the slowly coming year. Last year, I chose to act on faith. That decision led me into a whirlwind of career change, whose effects I will only be able to judge in time. The decision, like my self-reflection at the solstice, focused on my life and aspirations and only grudgingly, if at all, recognized my family and the crucial role they play in my life.

Accordingly, my intention for the new year is a three-fold reflection of my growing faith:

To have faith in my family
To create boundaries between myself and toxicity and toxic people
To focus on eliminating toxicity of thought, word, and deed within me

It seems to me that this is the best way I can improve as a member of my family. Talking about this to a twelve-step group I’m a member of, I said that it seems that this is the essence of the teachings of the Twelve Steps. After acting on faith to make a change in the outer world, it is crucial that the next change be within me, especially within my heart. According to many faiths, change within our hearts have the greatest ability to transform our lives as we face the hard human world in the slowly growing light of the cold, lustrous winter.