Hazy Shade of Winter….

“look around

leaves are brown

and the sky is a hazy shade of winter…”

Simon and Garfunkle

The election behind us mostly and the transition from one administation to another begins. Like the turning cycles of the seasons, power has it’s way of resisting the larger rhythms of Sun and Moon…. the plants still wither with the cold wind and the seeds drop into the soil to sleep. The last bits of food and nurishment are removed and stored. Winter. The time of cold and contrasts…. deep dreaming…. root vegitables and long stretches of time reflecting on the year that has passed and the one waiting in the wings for curtain call.

This winter is particulary difficult. Covid is ravaging the country. The shift of political power is being challenged. The disquieting threat of violence of those who feel entitled to support a dying regime. Economic dysfunction and the long roads to recovery and sanity. These winter dreams will be nightmarish for some as we navigate some of the most difficult challenges some of us have ever experience.

This Winter is not about just going into the dark. It is tearing open the dark and shining flood lights on the contents. To see… to discern… to act and to make real the dreams and visions of the world we want to live in.

Dreams become real because we dare to risk the complacency of self comfort against the action to walk into the unknow. This is the call to the journey. The hero’s call if we want to use the metaphor from Joeseph Cambell’s book, “Hero With A Thousand Faces”… We walk into the dark forest… the valley of death…. We face the reality of who we are against the challenges that arise.

This winter in this country we have to face the intitutionalize racism, classism, the need to find a way out of this pandemic, how do we feed, house and take care of a nation of people barely holding on? How do we face down and defeat the tyranny of political power that will destroy all that is good in this country?

We open our eyes in the dark….. We become awake in the dream…. We do the next right thing that serves the geatest good.