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T HE GOSPEL OF WINTERArlene Bernstein in Growing Season uses gardening to help her work through the grief of losing a child. In the passage below she is thinning the winter lettuce she has planted. The lettuce seeds that I scattered in hastily prepared ground as a parting gesture before we left two weeks ago have all sprouted. They have made their first true leaves and are crowding each other as they continue to grow. They cannot all expand and mature in such suffocating closeness. Since I haven’t yet turned the soil, I have no place to transplant them. Thinning is the only answer. Reflect on any kind of suffocating closeness in your life that prevents you from maturity and growth. Is there anything that needs to be thinned out? What is too crowded? Winter is a good time to meditate on the things that need more space in our lives. Read Mark 1:35. Follow the example of Jesus in going away alone to a place of solitude. This is a way of thinning your lettuce. Sometimes there are just too many thoughts, too many people, too much action. In the spaces between our words and our actions we gain new insights into our living.
The sting of grief is often compared to the sting of winter. A season of grief, like winter, insists that you give yourself space for solitude. Reflect on Kahlil Gibran’s quote below from The Prophet. And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields. And you watch with serenity through the winters of your grief. Walk through some of your seasons of grief. What have these seasons taught you? |