The Sacred Pause
Mid-winter is precious. What we call The Sacred Pause, the liminal time where the earth rests. Truly, it is my most favorite time of year.
The Sacred Pause is the moment before the wave crashes and renews itself.
The pause after the exhale.
The being instead of the doing.
This is the time Persephone is still in the underworld, heeding the call of her inner life, doing the work that is of being, that is incredibly generative, incredibly abundant, in its quiet.
This time of year reminds us of how nature never keeps on creating, it needs this slow time, to rest and to gather stores of energy deep within the earth before its time for the inevitable re-emergence of springs blossoming forth.
When we honor this slow time we honor ourselves as part of nature. We are not meant to keep doing, to keep creating all year long. We are given this opportunity to see how we winter our creativity and our deep self.
Author and herbalist Judith Berger, in her book “Herbal Rituals” writes:
“As we come to the end of a single yearly cycle, it is fitting that we dwell, even if only briefly, in the void between one year and the next, letting the full body of the year sink in before we step outside to greet another cycle of the earth’s journey around the sun.”
At this precious threshold time, the earth and its season are calling us inward, to the darkness of the fertile void of our innermost selves. Oftentimes sudden loss, heartbreak, grief or illness calls us, wisely, to go inside ourselves and see what is there~ asking us to pay attention, to be still, to listen and to know, deeply, our own hearts. Even without these outward events, we can still go to that place which touches upon our innate nature: the fact that we ebb and flow like the seasons, and this is truly the time of sacred stillness.
I invite you to join me in the moment of this mystery of mid-winter. To give it our offerings of stillness and silence~ knowing that spring will come, as it always does, and in the meantime, we will go gently to be with the winter of our lives.
