There is a deep quiet in these winter months. I profess as I often do, that we were meant to hibernate these short, cold days away….
But in this quite-this week in particular with the anticipation of the coming new year and now it, 2017, crawling under the covers and waking us up on this best-day-of-the-week Sunday morning-I ask myself this question of hibernation, with a new eye.

For I can look back at,

at least the past few years,

and see that these deep, dark weeks of struggle against self-judged laziness have been nothing more than a necessary and rich fallow time. 
Fallow: A period of time when a field is left unseeded.

Fallow.
This deep dark winter time,

these weeks of growing anticipation of the holidays,

of the turning of the calendar,

of slightly, slowing growing-longer days,

what if they’re not a struggle against the lethargy that calls up hibernation thoughts, but a leaned-into rejuvenation?

Not with effort, for that would negate the very state of being implied, but an accepting of the undeniable lethargy and therefore seeing what is good in it and intended by it.

As my youngest, wise son said to me recently, ‘Stop condemning <your> self condemnation; just accept it. What does it look like now?’ 
Oh wise one.
So on this first day of 2017 I stay under the covers. I leave the journals and books scattered around me on the bed, I pour the kettle over a third cup of tea and lean into the lethargy.
I am not lazy, I am fallow.
And I know from experience, I will be reseeded.

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Will you ever bring a better gift for the world than the breathing respect that you carry wherever you go right now? Are you waiting for time to show you some better thoughts?

William Stafford

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in love.
trish