Phillip Larkin asked Where can we live but days? and so I look out at the pearl grey morning and the sulky clouds, while the misty breath of winter hugs my bones. Collectively, we button up and bunker down. In summer, we are a people on public display, wrapped up in sunshine and good times. Now, we huddle and hunker, bending into ourselves a bit, recognising a different breathing space shaped by shorter hours and the toddler tantrums of sudden squally showers. Our waking hours are coloured differently as a pastel sunshine hovers frailly above us. The air is sullen and a whiplash wind begins to prowl the streets. 

In Melbourne, we are chained to the city’s meteorological mood swings. She orchestrates this harlequin haphazardry; blue sky in the morning bewitched in a cloudy cauldron to the inky innards of tempest by night. For now, winter reigns in glacial indifference, dispensing arctic kisses and the cold shoulder.

How has your day started? What attitude did you bring to work? Have you exuded warmth despite the weather?

The days pass as they always do. We fill them with the things we must do; the duties, the routines, the rosters, the turning up reliably, being a team player, volunteering, lurching out of the doona snug of warmth into the morning dark to catch the early train. We wrap-up in club colours for the weekend pilgrimage to the footy and the bruised and ragged hymn of hard-won victory on the way home.

Be grateful for something you did last weekend.

Birds still sing in trees but their song is less constant and chirrupy; their chirp has become a little more classical, no longer the heavy rock of summer, but songs with spaces and silences in them. Long blue notes suggest unrequited love or a wistful nostalgia for other days or the small rub of regret. The suburbs become soggy as snow broods in the distance. Noses are pink and sniffly and a wet blazer fug lingers in trams. But, if we dare to, we can fling ourselves upon the gloom as Thomas Hardy’s darkling thrush does In a full-hearted evensong Of joy illimited. We can live days full-hearted and joyous, wrapped up, singing in the rain, noticing the muted colours of creation and tasting the comfort food of casseroles, seeking the welcome refuge of home. 

Is a small rub of regret tugging at you? Acknowledge it and put it behind you, perhaps thinking of how you may repair this or change your action next time.

Think of some ways you can be joyous during the winter months?

Some of us will experience a winter of the heart, a winter of discontent and desolation, not too distant from the dark night of the soul. It may happen through abandonment or rejection or an accumulation of slights and sorrows. It may be a change in our emotional landscape where certainties become chimeras, where all we have known is suddenly open to question, when doubt or despair block out the sun.

Have you experienced a time of disquiet or uncertainty?

Jesus himself knew this when in the Garden of Gethsemane he asked, “Father, why have you forsaken me?” as his destiny, the crucifixion, loomed before him. During this winter-time of the heart, it is wise to seek counsel and sometimes it is prudent to take time to withdraw from the fray temporarily. Sometimes we have to hug ourselves, to take time-out, to sit on the sidelines waiting for the sun to come out in our lives again. We will know when the time is right.

Are you waiting for the time to be right?

We recognise winter as a season with its own special consolations and interiority denied us in brighter and longer hours. Here, I seek out words to keep me warm. Being indoors means I have recourse to improving words and ideas and delightful imaginative excursions which are often overlooked in the energy and interaction of summer. I burrow into books and enjoy their company. I feast on words that can provoke the heart and unfreeze the icy splinter of indifference. These words and ideas are being internalised, germinating,  cross-pollinating with other thoughts and dreamscapes to come to fruition in a later season. 

What do you burrow into during winter?

Winter is a tale of resilience and regeneration, of subtle subterranean growth, of battening down, of Mother Earth resting. It is a time for gathering in with loved ones, hibernating and conserving, waiting patiently for the soft swoon of Spring. I am writing this the day before the winter solstice and we have all remarked on the recent cold. We remember the chilblains and nana-knitted mittens of the past and pull our beanies on tightly over our ears. We bide our time through the longest night and shortest day and slowly, imperceptibly the days will begin to lengthen.  The Song of Songs 2:11-12 looks joyfully ahead as winter wanes. See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone. Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come; the cooing of doves is heard in our land.

But for now, it is a time to count the blessings of scarves and soup and good thick socks and appreciating the hug of homecoming at the end of the day. 

Take a moment to pray for those who do not have the hug of homecoming or the shelter that we enjoy.

Winter – a time to thank God for the unexpected shape and kaleidoscopic colour and surprise of these, the days we live in.

And, of course, for rainbows after rain.

Take some time now to count your winter blessings.

By Ann Rennie