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.