A WINTER PRAYER
Recently I was gifted a whole day to myself, where I could fully enjoy the void of solitude. I laced up my boots and went on a walk in Nature, to find myself completely alone with the land. To hear the sound of my own breath and go wherever I felt a call.
In this emptiness, so much of the land started to speak to me, and I could listen very clearly. I had been in a portal already since just before the Solstice, making space to receive from the medicine of Winter. To integrate it fully within myself. To let it inspire me to create and hopefully share with others.
Of course, this embodiment starts from a personal place, and it’s not all romantic. It is actually extremely uncomfortable, because the Winter has this way of bringing you into the places you don’t usually like to go to. But once you have made the way, you get to notice how much you are being supported - and that’s precisely when you feel like a very special kind of light beam appears.
The land spoke to me that day and helped me weave those threads together. Spontaneously, a poem came together. It feels like an invocation, or a prayer. I recorded it on my phone, just here in this moment, as I retreat in my home (with a currently stuffy nose which I hope you won’t notice too much).
My hope with this prayer is to bring you into a place of receiving, of feeling into how multi-dimensional winter really is. May you enjoy it, whether you listen to it once out of curiosity, or whether it becomes a part of your every day connection to yourself, bringing a loving awareness to where we are in this year’s cycle.
✺
Winter of the sharp colds and the misty breath of Heaven
Winter of the rivers and waterfalls carving the mountain
Winter of the bear hibernating in the wisdom cave
Winter of wet, cold earth drinking to her heart’s content.
Winter of the endless rotting, processing, composting
happening below and also within.
Winter of the deafening silence and the moving stillness
Winter of cosmic darkness and beams of light
Winter of magic. So much magic,
flooding in the sacred void of beingness.
Winter of discomfort and wonder
Meeting the old, brittle and frail being
Winter of death and the mystery of what comes next
Winter of transience and paths to the unknown
Winter of tending to the inner fire
Winter of mending what is broken
Winter of hearing the now louder voices
The longings, the pains, the shadows
The tears, the laughter, the love.
Winter of roots and feet planted deeply in the soil
Safely held between it all
Winter of being taken by Mother’s arms
To be made anew.