Winter's Gifts

Live in each season as it passes; breath air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each. Let them be your only diet drink and botanical medicines.

-Henry David Thoreau

Finally the rains have come to northern California. It seemed forever for winter to come and now it has with such intensity that I even had to pull some plants off my front porch in fear of frost. It has been cold, rainy, and...well...wintry.

It seems so ironic that just as winter begins, so does one of the busiest of holiday seasons. It seems every day is frenzied with things to do, deadlines, and expectations. While all this is happening, you cannot help but feel that undertow-like pull of winter. Winter does not care if you have things to do, it still  beckons in a primordial way. It is calling upon us to rest, to sit still, to renew ourselves for yet another busy spring, and summer.

I feel a great comfort in my physical response to the seasons. It is a tangible way to experience ourselves as part of a whole, as part of the natural world. We are really not so far removed from nature as we may want to believe. It might wise to listen to the wisdom of our natural urges rather than try to push our way through them. Try to find a way to incorporate more rest into our days, more time for reflection, more time to do nothing.

I know this is hard, with so much to do. But perhaps we have more time than we think. Maybe it is more about priorities. It's funny how your perception of time can actually affect its seeming lack or abundance. At least that's what I've decided to tell myself! And it does seem to have its truth. 

There is a time and a season to everything and it all works together so well, if we let it. Tonight I am rededicating myself to honoring this season as best I can so that I may receive the quiet gifts winter has to offer. 

Thoughts on Biodiversity

We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert Frost's familiar poem, they are not equally fair. The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road / the one less traveled by / offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth.
-Rachel Carson

It has been a wintry weather-y last couple of weeks that have left me dreaming of warmer days to come. I have been concentrating on seed catalogs and planning my vegetable garden. I have had this dream of an heirloom vegetable garden for some time now. I love the idea of eating vegetables with a history ones that have led their own lives and have grown and adapted over time. I love how beautiful and imperfect they look. I went online to find out more about growing heirlooms and quickly became disheartened by the information that I found. It sounded quite difficult to successfully heirloom garden. Confused with all the information I had found, my head swimming with words like “hybrid,” “GMO,” and “crop yields,” I continued on with my day including reading Authormomwithdogs’s blog. She seemed to be in a similar wintry mood wishing for spring and reading Seeds of Change. Aha, a gardener! I would ask her what she thought! She replied the most succinct and accurate description of the various gardening options I have yet to read. She has inspired me to dip into the heirloom world and not be intimidated. She also made me think A LOT about biodiversity and not just in the plant world.

In school I studied cultural anthropology and religion. I am also lucky enough to have traveled fairly often. I am passionate about people. I am passionate about how different people live and eat and relate to one another and experience and connect with the divine. I think it is beautiful how many paths there are, how many ways of being there are, how much life has to teach us the more we open up to its vastness. I am always fascinated with how differently people experience life, the variety of perspectives there are! That is why I get so…I don’t even know what the word is…disheartened maybe…when I see life being homogenized. Popular American culture seems to promote this way of being. It seems to me that all plastic surgery and the mainstreaming of self-help-type psychology and their resultant talk shows has accomplished is create a homogenous image of health and beauty that does not reflect real life or real emotions. Real life and real emotions are what are interesting and what matter. They are what create great art and push us forward.

It is not the easier path to consciously uphold diversity. Many of those who are the most different from us are our greatest teachers, the ones who finally get us to grow. And growing means changing and change is always uncomfortable. But without those challenges we are unable to grow and adapt.

There is so much beauty in life, in imperfection, in reality, in the messiness of it all. Biodiversity is not only the foundation of life as we know it, it is the je ne sais quoi that makes life worth living.