Soul Matters – April 2021

This past, week, I received two newsletters. The first, from writer Maria Popova, shared an excerpt from author Katherine May’s book Wintering, about the quiet, difficult seasons of life and how to allow them. The second, from Eileen at Rebel Heart Books, described the loss of her husband’s parents to COVID-19 in February. Read together, their thoughts about our intrinsic interconnectedness and vulnerability as human beings highlighted, for me, the importance of two, rare values: humility and kindness.

While I am delighted that spring is here—with its daffodils and vaccines multiplying like rabbits—I am also keenly aware that this is not a normal sort of spring, nor is it a normal year. Still. The ripple effect of the virus continues to affect many, compelling an unbidden time of “wintering,” of going within. Sad seasons of the heart, as we all know, can and do come at all sorts of inconvenient times. Even in spring, with all its new life and promise.

So in this lovely season, I want to reach out to those who are hurting—who have lost jobs, businesses, loved ones, even hope—to say that what has happened to you, matters; it deserves your attention and reflection. And to those who have escaped, relatively unscathed, I say, as I do to myself, there, but for the grace of God, go I.

These two, lovely and poignant newsletters reminded me of our intrinsic connection, and the importance of being vigilantly humble and kind. It is good to remember that we all have our winters as well as our springs. As May writes:

… it’s our responsibility to listen to those who have wintered before us…This may involve the breaking of a lifelong habit… that of looking at other people’s misfortunes and feeling certain that they brought them upon themselves in a way that you never would. This isn’t just an unkind attitude. It does us harm, because it keeps us from learning that disasters do indeed happen and how we can adapt when they do. It stops us from reaching out to those who are suffering. And when our own disaster comes, it forces us into a humiliated retreat, as we try to hunt down mistakes that we never made in the first place or wrongheaded attitudes that we never held. Either that, or we become certain that there must be someone out there we can blame. Watching winter and really listening to its messages, we learn that effect is often disproportionate to cause; that tiny mistakes can lead to huge disasters; that life is often bloody unfair, but it carries on happening with or without our consent. We learn to look more kindly on other people’s crises, because they are so often portents of our own future.”

If you are hurting, I invite you to gently hold your hurting heart, even as you let spring hold you in its promise. And if you are not hurting, I invite you to be especially kind to others, whose pain and story you likely do not know. And, as I reminded myself in the two most difficult, wintering springs of my own life, always remember that seasons change.