Ready for Winter

"Have you got in your wood for this winter? What else have you got in? Of what use a great fire on the hearth, and a confounded little fire in the heart?"

                                                                                                                     ~Henry David Thoreau

As I was walking through the fields the other day, watching the birds and squirrels busying about and making their preparations for the winter, it suddenly occurred to me that, in a spiritual sense, I was also preparing for the meagre days ahead. Now that the leaves are gone, we have reached one of the bleakest, and yet, strange to say, one of my favorite times of the year. Thoreau said his spirits would infallibly rise in proportion to the outward dreariness, and I find the same to be true of myself. Not because I like dreariness, but because I've learned how much beauty can be found in apparently desolate surroundings. 

There's no challenge to finding beauty on a lovely summer's day, but now all our senses must be on the alert, and our spirits receptive to the softest touch. 

 

" And this is human happiness...

'Tis to have

Attentive and believing faculties; 

To go abroad rejoicing in the joy 

Of beautiful and well created things..."

    And so at this time, I am treasuring up all the loveliness around me. Truly, there have been moments these past couple of weeks that I wouldn't trade for all the splendours of summer! Autumn sunrises, the frost sparkling in the early morning light, the wind blowing through the dry grasses, abandoned birds nests found in thickets along the edge of the woods, the mosses and lichens, so fresh and delicate after our badly needed rains, the sunsets...and every once in a while, a glorious, unexpected songbird, pouring out music as if his heart would burst for joy! 

I heard a bird at break of day

  Sing from the autumn trees

A song so mystical and calm,

  So full of certainties,

       No man, I think, could listen long         

  Except upon his knees.

Yet this was but a simple bird,

  Alone, among dead trees.

The coming of winter no longer holds any dread for me. All creation is full of the glory of the Lord, and after all, "this cold and solitude are friends of mine." 😊