Sunset Over Blanca Peak on a Snowy Day
Nourishment is real faith. ...faith in yourself … If you are ever going to get this faith healthy and growing so it’s with you all year long, then you need to nourish it. Nourishment is your awareness in the continuity of life and in the efficacy of the Universe that you can believe in. … It’s the faith that you are what you are that brings about miracles. Gregge Tiffen (Open Secrets: Sacred Passageways – December, 2011)
Several days ago, I received a weekly post that began to frame my reflections for this sacred winter season. “… aware experience” it read, “that can give each of us in our own way the body, mind and spirit knowledge to know what is worth nurturing and what can intentionally be put into compost to decompose and fertilize new growth at another time (emphasis mine).” (from the 11th week of the 11th year/series of PS 52 written by Patrece on behalf of P Systems – www.p-systems.com).
I’d received a catalyst in the form of a question to frame my own personal ‘seasonal reflections’, along with a reminder that there is no waste in the Universe. Thoughts, beliefs, habits which we release as no longer needed can be lovingly discarded to decompose over time, for they too will recompose in their own time.
Honoring this time leading up to and including the Winter Solstice in just a couple weeks, I find joy in creating a festive, yet peaceful place here at home in which to settle in and call forth questions that will lead me to identify what I want to nurture and nourish in the year ahead as well as that which no longer serves me.
What is faith to me?
What do my thoughts, words and deeds say about where I place my faith?
How deep is my faith in the continuity of life and the efficacy of the Universe?
What will support me to understand and deepen, as well as use my faith more fully?
What is sacred to me?
What is the best in me that I aim to nourish and nurture in the coming year?
Going deep within is one of winter’s gifts that is all too often rushed or even forgotten in the hectic seasonal pace set by the world. Without a clear intention to honor the season, we can find ourselves replacing this time designed by nature for nourishment and nurturing with busy-ness and mundane goal setting. But humanity and our precious planet, along with our own well-being, need us to pause for the restoration, self-reflection, and faith on which growth, expansion, and self-satisfaction rest. May we each in our own way do just that.
To whatever it might mean to you, in reality or symbolically, give yourself a period of time as a gift to yourself in which your faith is renewed. This gift is not faith in others or in the world around you but in yourself as the continuum of good operating in your life at all times under all circumstances. This is no myth! Gregge Tiffen
Cool Hand Luke knows how to slow down in winter!