Winter Sap & Regeneration
“We sacrifice so much for flatness” -Caryn McHose
It is true. I feel it too- the pressure, expectation, old patterns, and disconnect that draw us away from depth, inner knowing, truth, awareness.
Winter has made its way into the rural bends that twist and turn through western North Carolina where we reside and it is drawing me in.
“No matter how deeply I go down
into myself,
My God is dark, and like a webbing
made of a hundred roots
that drink in silence.”
-Rainer Maria Rilke
There is a thirst, a silence that the shorter days of winter provoke as God takes on the shape of velvety darkness.
One that refutes flatness- the inability to be moved and touched deeply.
As nature curls in on itself (I love child’s pose or bālāsana for this as a felt experience) into rest, hibernation, and night-time, the light of spirit, heart, and discernment are stoked and illumined- unraveling the soul’s path, the journey of really knowing yourself and therefore, the rest of life, and the ability to be deeply moved, touched, and transformed by it and to offer the same in return, participating in a regenerative cycle.
-
What awakens you to presence, what awakens your heart?
I was recently listening to Gabriela Gutierrez’s Substack (Under a Fig Tree) post on Aphrodite and her archetypal energy of beauty- beauty as attraction and annihilation. Beauty that awakens the heart and draws the experiencer toward it and in the same breath, demands destruction, destruction that leads to deeper knowing, wider truth, and expanded aliveness.
There is an affirming parallel between beauty in the context of Aphrodite and the healing and integration of deep-seated grooves and pathways. In somatic experiencing, a holistic approach to working with unresolved experiences that burden our ability to be who and what we really are and engage authentically, causing a sort of flatness, orienting toward beauty is an antidote. It is a practice and felt remembering that cultivates presence and safety, necessary conditions for the transformation of hurt and undigested material that negatively impact how we engage with life, diminishing how much of us is available to life.
As we move toward the horizon of Winter Solstice, the longest night and darkest day of the year, revered since time immemorial, may you drink in whatever awakens your heart; beauty, and take silent refuge in its presence, held by the velvety darkness of God [Spirit, Universe, Cosmos, Truth, etc.]. And may it gently deconstruct any spaces of flatness, that you may be touched by something bigger than yourself and touch it back.
We will be tending the soil of our soul alongside Winter in our upcoming Solstice Story Weaving event with Madison Traviss of Refhygge, 12/17, 6-8pm, at Cowee School in Franklin NC. All are welcome, no experience required, donation based.
It’s a sweet time being in community by candlelight and tending to our inner and outer landscapes through writing, craft, and connection.
Please try to pre-register as we will have materials for a seasonal craft and want to make sure we have enough :). Registration info. here.
For the coming days and anything that may get stirred:
“Finally on my way to yes
I bump into
all the places
where I said no
to my life
all the untended wounds
the red and purple scars
those hieroglyphs of pain
carved into my skin, my bones,
those coded messages
that send me down
the wrong street
again and again
where I find them
the old wounds
the old misdirections
and I lift them
one by one
close to my heart
and I say holy
holy.” - Pesha Joyce Gertler
-
Wishing you gentleness and regeneration in the many realms of your being this Winter!
xx Ashlyn Miller