Life, for everyone, has difficult times. Katherine May has a reassuring, but not always cheerful way about her. She calls troubled times Wintering. The subtitle of her book explains that it’s about The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times. My wife and I read this one together. It reminded me, in some ways, of Barbara Brown Taylor’s Learning to Walk in the Dark. In a society vapidly preoccupied with an often shallow happiness, admitting, even pondering the things that are difficult is an act of courage. May has a disarming way of writing, a humility and self-deprecation that are an antidote to the brazen self-assurance we too often see in the media. She looks for lessons in her own experiences of pain and loss, and yes, surviving through winter.
Winter is often a quiet time of reflection. In our bright, loud, beeping, buzzing world we don’t take much time for such things. Indeed, capitalism (which is generally not deep, although deeply engrained) doesn’t encourage it. “The more you can work,” it whispers in your ear, even while sleeping, “the better you’ll feel.” Winter slows things down. Makes life a bit harder. Think of all those days when you just don’t feel like going outside in the cold, snow, and sleet. When the chill drives you next to the radiator, covered in lap blankets. When it’s dark most of the time. Such are good times to think. As May shows, when you turn a difficult situation around and look at it from different angles, truths about yourself, about life, begin to emerge. What is it we’re after that keeps us running all the time, dangerously overheating? We need winter.
The anecdotes here are deeply personal. This is particularly difficult for a writer because many of us face rejection frequently. When you’ve poured yourself into a book, blithe casting aside by agents and publishers hurts. I admire the bravery and the wisdom of writers like May. She shows that wintering is possible, and that it is followed by spring. Lives, she notes, are cyclical. We can find quite a lot of meaning in that. I often find myself fearing winter. The heating bills. The wearing of many layers of clothes for months at a time. The dark and cloudy days. Yet a good part of me welcomes the retreat. I know that, in the cycle of the year with few days off from work, that if I can make it to Halloween, some rest—some wintering—awaits. And that is a hopeful thought indeed.
