Wintering through peril to possibility

I have been trying to listen more deeply, remember more fully, and seek more sincerely

Oh, how I long for the whimsical childhood days of wishing, whispering words from deep within, almost innately, “star light, star bright, first star I see tonight.”

Oh, for the days of inhaling deeply before a cake and a crowd just before a big, wet exhale extinguishes the candles and makes our wishes all come true.

Oh, for the days of pinching a yellow dandelion turned to white fluff between small fingers and blowing the seeds of our wishes to the wind.

Yet this, I have learned, is not the time to be wishing for other days. Sometimes, I have learned, even in the midst of summer, we are called to winter. I have not learned this alone. This winter, I have been trying to listen more deeply, remember more fully, and seek more sincerely, and I have found a voice to help me with this.

Krista Tippett has been exploring, “the great questions of meaning … at the intersection of spiritual inquiry, science, social healing, and the arts,” in “On Being,” an awardwinning, American public radio show, old enough for a cake with 18 candles. Podcasting has amplified this conversation resulting in two million downloads from people who are interested in weekly discoveries, “about the immensity of our lives, what it means to be human, and who we will be to each other.”

Last week I learned why we might want to stop wishing it were summer from a conversation Krista had with Katherine May, author of “Wintering — The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times.”

“Plants and animals don’t fight the winter,” she reads aloud. “Wintering is a time of withdrawing from the world, maximizing scant resources, carrying out acts of brutal efficiency and vanishing from sight; but that’s where the transformation occurs.”

President Joe Biden, a title and name I type for the first time with spring joy in my winter heart, spoke poetically and powerfully about winter in his inaugural address, yet with a different energy.

“We will press forward with speed and urgency, for we have much to do in this winter of peril and possibility.”

This winter sounds very different from the one of withdrawing. President Biden knows how to winter well in the middle of a beautiful summer, through personal grief and national mourning. His wintering has led him to healing. His spring begins now.

“To heal, we must remember,” he said during a memorial for the nearly half-a-million people who have died from the pandemic in the U.S. “It’s hard sometimes to remember, but that’s how we heal.”

This pandemic has provided an opportunity for us to winter and remember, to face those things we would like to forget when only staring them in the face will make us whole.

That kind of remembering is needed on a personal level and a political level. That kind of staring in the face, is what is needed to heal the death brought to our elders in long-term, short-on-care, homes. No one remembered enough from the first wave to prevent this second wave, but it is not too late to remember and stave off third and fourth waves.

That kind of remembering might heal whoever came up with the idea to reward the creator of this provincial system of dying without dignity, one Michael Deane Harris, former premier, with an Order of Ontario.

The current premier of this province, one Douglas Robert Ford, will surely be remembered when the next election comes around so we can make choices to begin the healing and transformation needed here after four years of decisions made like it was summer all year ’round.

The “much to do,” this winter, President Biden refers to, is needed here. “Much to repair. Much to restore. Much to heal.”

In this seemingly endless “winter of peril,” may our remembering spring forth the healing we need, like the rays of the sun we remember from our summering.

Deirdre Pike is a freelance columnist for The Hamilton Spectator. She is wintering, remembering, and healing, in her home in the Strathcona neighbourhood near downtown Hamilton. You can reach her dpikeatthespec@gmail.com or find her on Facebook, posting photos of cats and gardens wistfully wintering.