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A Mid-Winter Prayer
Theme: It’s mid-winter. Half of the season of cold and dark is behind us, and we can already notice the days are lengthening. As we slowly creep toward spring during the next six weeks let’s savor the hints nature gifts us with of the greener season to come.
Opening Prayer: Holy One, we are at the winter season’s deepest point. As our earth turns toward spring and the sun inches higher in the sky help us to notice. Help us to hope that just like the frozen ground, our hearts will thaw, take root, and grow toward the light of your ever-present love. Amen.
Opening Song: Julian of Norwich, Ann Mayo Muir and Gordon Bok https://youtu.be/oy8mPGJ1TP8
Reading 1: “Painted Turtle,” by Gayle Boss
The day is bright and warm for December 1, but the logs in the marsh pond are bare. Spring to summer into early fall they served, on sunny days, as spa to a dozen or so painted turtles. I would see them basking, splay-legged, stretching their leathery necks out full length, avid for every luscious atom of sunlight and sun-warmth. Out of sight now, they’ve not escaped the harsher cold that’s coming. The water is maybe waist-deep in this pond, but a murky soup, clogged with roots and plants. One day in the fall, as water and air cooled, at some precise temperature an ancient bell sounded in the turtle brain. A signal: Take a deep breath. Each creature slipped off her log and swam for the warmer muck bottom. Stroking her way through the woven walls of plant stems, she found her bottom place. She closed her eyes and dug into the mud. She buried herself. And then, pulled into her shell, encased in darkness, she settled into a deep stillness. Her heart slowed—and slowed—almost to stopping. Her body temperature dropped—and stopped just short of freezing. Now, beneath a layer of mud, beneath the weight of frigid water and its skin of ice and skim of snow, everything in her has gone so still she doesn’t need to breathe. And anyway, the iced-over pond will soon be empty of oxygen. Sunk in its bottom-mud, for six months she will not draw air into her lungs. To survive a cold that would kill her, or slow her so that predators would kill her, she slows herself beyond breath in a place where breath is not possible. And waits. As ice locks in the marsh water and howling squalls batter its reeds and brush, beneath it all she waits. It is her one work, and it is not easy. Oxygen depletion stresses every particle of her. Lactic acid pools in her bloodstream. Her muscles begin to burn—her heart muscle, too, a deadly sign. That acid has to be neutralized, and calcium is the element to do it. Out of her bones, then out of her shell, her body pulls calcium, slowly dissolving her structure, her shape, her strength. But to move to escape—requiring breath—in a place where there is no oxygen—that would suffocate her. So, though she is dissolving, every stressed particle of her stays focused on the silver bead of utter quietude. It’s this radical simplicity that will save her. And deep within it, at the heart of her stillness, something she has no need to name, but something we might call trust: that one day, yes, the world will warm again, and with it, her life.
Reading 2: The Year’s Awakening, by Thomas Hardy
How do you know, deep underground,
Hid in your bed from sight and sound,
Without a turn in temperature,
With weather life can scarce endure,
That light has won a fraction’s strength,
And day put on some moments’ length,
Whereof in merest rote will come,
Weeks hence, mild airs that do not numb;
O crocus root, how do you know,
How do you know?
Reflection Time
Intercessions:
We pray that our souls, like the crocus, will hear your voice calling us to take root and grow toward the light, even in this cold season, for you are the soil and you are the light. Oh Loving Source of Life, we pray.
We pray that the creatures of field and forest find sustenance enough to survive until spring arrives with its abundance. Oh Loving provider, we pray.
We pray for all people who struggle in the cold, without adequate clothing or shelter. Help us to open our hearts and loosen our hands to offer help. Oh Loving Source of Compassion, we pray.
We pray for hope. May we, like the painted turtle, focus on the inner stillness of this winter world, knowing with the knowledge of hope that we will breathe in the warmer breezes of spring and all of its renewal. Loving Source of Hope, we pray.
We pray for the vision to see the beauty in winter’s darkness, to enjoy the quiet of gray days, and to notice the subtle hints of the season to come. Oh Loving Gaze, we pray.
Closing Prayer: Please raise your hands in blessing. May the Spirit that drives the wind, etches the snowflakes and builds the clouds blow over us on this winter night, awakening us to the beauty of this season and giving us hope of the season to come. Amen.
Closing Song: In honor of Brigid, saint of both Druid and Christian traditions, whose love of the earth and its seasons was legendary, and whose feast day was yesterday:
Light the Fire, by Liam Lawton
There travels forth from the passages of history
A woman’s voice that is heard across the plains,
That calls once more, for a people of new vision
To heal our wounds and green our Earth again,
She spreads her cloak ‘cross the land and far beyond it,
A shadow cast on a people void of hope.
She speaks of peace and the chains that weigh upon it
And there her light shall glimmer from the oak
And all that binds the people shall be broke.
So light the Fire of God’s desire
Within all hearts, let sorrows end.
So light the Fire of God’s desire
God’s chosen one, Your peace upon us send.
And wells now dry, shall issue forth with plenty
To flow upon the sad and parching earth,
To make a prayer from the hearts now tired and empty,
To call on her to bring about new birth,
To make anew the greening of the Earth.
So light the Fire of God’s desire
Within all hearts, let sorrows end.
So light the Fire of God’s desire
God’s chosen one, Your peace upon us send.
And we today need a prophet of new vision,
To lift the low – the forgotten child to heed,
To be the voice of the wounded and the weary,
To plant anew a fresh and peaceful seed
To dance the dance of God’s own Blessed Bríd.
So light the Fire of God’s desire…
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