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My Friend Got Stuck in the Winter

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We’re searching for new beginnings, my friend and I.

Yesterday, we took to driving along open roads, through fields turned yellow from the heat, with music playing loud enough to drown out all else, and we let the sound paint a picture of how much we’d changed.

A year ago, my friend and I let go of summer.

For me, the transition to autumn was swift and certain, and I gave myself no time to mourn the loss of light. For him, it was different. The slow draining of color from the maple leaves allowed for a deep, lasting sorrow to set in. And when the winter came, it stayed. There was little in the way of spring blossoms, and the summer heat has only felt oppressive.

The cold persists in defiance of the sun.

I’ve encouraged my friend, as I find I’m doing with many people these days, to try and root himself in a daily practice. When we get stuck in a season, and we feel unable to be fully present, I advocate that we make some new ritual to place us firmly in the season of the moment. It needn’t be complicated, only sincere.

For me, my personal practice is influenced by a variety of sources, some of which are quite complicated. I was born and bred an Episcopalian, and as such, my individual religiosity tends to be more structured and formal. I favor liturgy over improvisation (that is, unless I’m singing), and my daily rituals, when spoken aloud, are delivered in a tone that would be familiar to many an Anglican. But it doesn’t have to be that way for my friend, or for anyone who is searching for a method to feel present and connected again.

If I were to proselytize anything, it would be for everyone to develop their own personal religion; to make their heart into a hearth for lighting their own, distinct, sacred fire. How this is done is not of great importance to me, so long as it is done with intention, and done regularly enough to create a deep and lasting groove in your consciousness.

Ice on Fire, by Eugenijus Radlinskas

For me, I need to turn my little room into a sanctuary. I need to light my incense, prepare my offerings, speak with reverence and clarity to the gods in my heart, to all that is seen and unseen. I need the drama, because that’s a part of who I am.

For you, it could be as simple as standing in the morning sun, eyes open or eyes closed, and placing your awareness on your center, or your edges, or the feeling of the dirt, the tile, the carpet underneath your feet.

Whatever method feels right for you, the important thing is that the fire in your heart remain lit, and that you honor that fire regularly. As I wrote on Imbolc earlier this year, I keep vigil to the fire in my heart, for the fire is a birthright, an inheritance, and the fire will keep me warm as the summer turns to fall, and the fall to winter. The fire will sustain me through the cold, and prepare me once again for the return of the sun. I light this fire, and I experience a new beginning.

This is what I want for my friend, and this is what I want for you, as well.

So I ask you, my insightful readers:

If you were me, and you found yourself in dialogue with a friend or family member who felt disconnected from the fire in their heart — their feeling of passion, their sense of purpose, and their connection to divinity – how would you advise them to get reconnected? What words or rituals might you share in order to help someone discover that fire again? Is there is a part of your personal practice that would be helpful?

How would you help get someone unstuck from their perpetual winter?

How Does Paganism Handle Turnover?

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A friend messaged me this morning to tell me she’d been fired. The news was unexpected, as it often is, and she was understandably torn up over it. My heart sunk, and I hurt for her. I wanted to reach out and embrace her, but I couldn’t. There was only text between us, and the text was insufficient. Words are not the same as touch, the same as shoulders, the same as passing the tissue across the table. Words are sometimes not enough.

About a year ago I lost my job. It was non-traditional creative work, not the kind that pays regularly or has a set schedule. But it was still a job, and it was a central focus of my life. Losing it was devastating, and profoundly disorienting.

I didn’t allow myself much space to acclimate to my new state of joblessness. There was no time. There was a mortgage which had become, overnight, too much to manage, and I had a sense that the momentum I’d worked so hard to build in my career over the previous decade would be for nothing if I didn’t figure out, immediately, what I would do next. On top of all that, the people with whom I’d worked closest, who had become my support system — professionally and personally — were gone.

So, I scrambled. I called on friends to make introductions, and I began developing new business relationships. At the same time, my husband and I made the quick and difficult decision that if we were to stay afloat we would have to move out of our home. There was no way around that. So, in the course of a month we found a realtor, cleaned out most of our things, and put the house on the market. It sold in less than two months, and we moved across town into our smaller, more-manageable, for-rent abode. It was October, and a cold air had blown in. Hardly any time had passed, but nearly everything in our world looked different.

Turnover is a word misused in conversations about business. It’s vernacular for a cold, calculated process of comings and goings; new name-tags, new punch-cards; a new face to smile at, or laugh with, or avoid. But turnover would be better used to describe what happens in the heart, in the home, in the entire universe of the person who’s experienced a great loss. We undergo, perhaps even suffer, a turnover.

Many people “turn to faith” in moments of crisis, but it occurs to me that this phrase may not sit well with many contemporary Pagans, especially those who come from more literalist Christian backgrounds. Perhaps “turn to tradition” is less loaded, but I’m not sure it means the same thing. Turning to faith is often painted as an act of one rejecting logic, or practicality, or something sensible. Faith is the problem, it would seem. But I’m not sure I see it that way. People “turn to faith” because they hurt, and they’re reaching for something to sooth the pain.

We fall down, and we get up. Sometimes it seems that this is our only choice to make: to get up. As we sort through our faiths, our beliefs, our correct terminology, our religious traditions and our community disagreements, there are people on the edges of every conversation who are simply trying to get up from whatever knocked them down last. It seems to me that if our religions aren’t equipping us with the tools to help our neighbor get herself up, or to help us lift ourselves up from whatever tragedy has beset us, then they are lacking something essential.

I wonder –

What have you turned to in moments of crisis? Faith? Tradition? Have you experienced a loss which led you to become more religious, or less so? Do you feel like Paganism, in any of its expressions, provides us with the tools to support one another in moments of pain, of suffering, of turnover? If so, how? If not, why?

Please share your story in the comment section, and feel free to engage one another in dialogue about your experiences. Then, pass this post along.