[Seasons: Winter XII]
We don’t often associate hope with winter. Winter is when the leaves have fallen and the trees are bare, the pregnant animals are expecting and uncomfortable but nowhere near delivering, and the garden sits flat and dark, barely even hospitable to weeds.
We associate hope with a feeling like elation or expectancy or energetic. And those aren’t feelings we have when it’s 37 degrees and raining.
But winter is a busy time. It’s when we order seeds and repair tools. It’s when we review our planting schedules, make to-do lists, and write down our goals. It’s the season we plant two-foot tall dormant fruit trees, prune more mature trees, and dress them with wood chips and mulch. There’s (cold) seasonal work. Always.
Perhaps some hope has no correlation to feelings of uplift.
The hope of winter is not a feeling nor is it a longing for a future, better season that makes us feel alive. Winter hope is purely doing what needs to be done. And that’s embodied hope—measurable actions that contribute to the type of world we dream about.
