Winter (pic below proves it) Seed Catalog Moon
Well. When you see a notice like this, Historic Cold, in Minnesota…
Category Archives: Weather +Climate
Winter Seed Catalog Moon
Wow. It’s gotten warmer since the late afternoon. 26. Tomorrow will see the temps above freezing, then a major plummet. Gonna try to get some work done outside tomorrow. Not sure what.
Cold, Colder, Coldest
Winter Seed Catalog Moon
Well, this is a cold forecast. The New Year is chilly.
A Cold Start
Winter Winter Moon
-16. That gets my attention. The study was down to 56 degrees. The gas stove has begun pumping out heat but we’re only up to 57 so far. That will change. This has, so far, been a Minnesota winter of old, snow and cold. May it continue. Paul Douglas said, “It reminds us that we’re really a distant suburb of Winnipeg.” True.
I was going to go into the MIA today but decided it was too cold. Besides, I had a very good day yesterday with Ovid and got some decent work done on Loki’s Children.
On the Margins
Samhain Winter Moon
We’re in the dark period of the year, the time when the Winter Solstice stands out even among long nights as longer and deeper. Tonight, all Solstice eve, it’s 4:30 pm and twilight fell a while ago. Snow comes down, adding to an inch or so to what we got over last night, all accumulating on top of the snows of early December.
Let me demonstrate how odd my religious situation is. When my doctor, Corrie Massie, asked me what plans I had for Christmas, without thinking, I said, “We’re Jewish.” Now we’re Jewish in that I support Kate’s Judaism, but what I really meant was, “I don’t celebrate the Christian holiday.” Didn’t want to start with the whole theological narrative in my doctor’s office so my unconscious answered. Not a lie, just not the whole truth.
No elevator speech for following the rhythmic cycles of nature, for celebrating not transcendence but immanence. No quick way to say I’m an outlier here, too, standing on the margins of religion. So often I find myself in conversations where I just don’t want to go through the whole analysis to explain myself.
Yes, too much carbon dioxide is, will be a problem. The unseemly gathering of wealth threatens the fabric of our culture. No, I’m not really a Democrat and am planets away from Republicans. Tea Party? Different universe. No, I don’t use pesticides. Yes, we grow a lot of our own food and keep bees. Oh, and I have a son in the Air Force who now has aspirations to become a general officer, to make sure authentic folks have their say. No, mining minerals on the border of the Boundary Waters Wilderness does not make sense. Socialism and single-payer health 
care? Sign me up. I’m glad China and the rest of Asia have begun to grow strong. I love the U.S.A. Cable television? Cut the cord. That sort of thing.
I guess I’m at an age where I’m living the life I chose and choose, yet no longer have that evangelical zeal for my decisions. Maybe because I recognize more and more how many right answers there are.
Repent Or Face Damnation
Samhain Winter Moon
Samhain ends tomorrow with the arrival of the Winter Solstice. The long fallow season following Summer’s End fades into the coldest months of the year. Here in Minnesota the coldest days of the year begin on December 1st, meteorological winter; the old calendar reflects a different climate situation in Ireland and Britain. Still, that calendar and its larger cultural context is the one which continues to influence our holy day practices. Christmas comes on the celebration of Sol Invictus, the all the conquering sun, a Roman holy time set by the coming of the Winter Solstice.
Paul Strickland heard a Christian talk radio show lamenting the re-emergence of Winter Solstice celebrations and complaining that everyone knows Christmas came long before such pagan holy days. We all laughed. Christmas is a late addition to the Winter Solstice celebration collection and not a very important holiday among Christians until the Victorian era.
When Samhain ends at the Winter Solstice, the old growing season shifts from the death and desiccation of fall into decay and enrichment, preparing the way as the light begins to increase. When Persephone returns to the Underworld to rule with Hades, the active forces of the soil begin their work in earnest, breaking down the fallen, dead and rotting materials into rich nutrients that feed soil organisms and will feed plants when Persephone returns home to her mother Demeter in the spring.
James Hillman said we see the gods today in our pathologies and I suppose that’s true in his sense, but the gods of polytheism suffered their Nietzschean fate long ago and have come again in more than psychological ways.
As Paul Ricoeur suggests, Christian’s familiar with biblical scholarship might return to the texts with a second naivete and see them once again as holy; so, I would suggest that the gods and goddesses of polytheism have long since resurrected, once again ready to offer themselves to us. All we need is our second naivete to see them. They can help us follow the recurring cycles of nature and understand them as powerful and dynamic realities, ones to which we owe allegiance.
Our blasphemy toward the old gods has created environmental havoc. We wantonly pollute–in the religious as well as the chemical sense–Poseidon’s ocean, Persephone and Hades’ soil, Zeus’s sky and even Aurora’s dawn. Perhaps only Apollo’s Sun has escaped our meddling.
We are heretics to the old religions and we have paid the price. If we do not repent, it will lead, as the logic of religion suggests, to our damnation.
NoSnowBirds
Samhain Winter Moon
They leave. This is the time. Lois, our cleaning lady, poked her head in and said, “Good-bye. See you in April.” Mark and Elizabeth leave on the 29th for Grass Valley in California. Many others are already gone to Florida or Arizona or New Mexico or Mexico.
We call them snowbirds, though it should be nosnowbirds, since they fly away at dropping temperatures and clouds of frozen moisture. The reasons they go are diverse, I imagine, but cluster around icy roads, slick sidewalks, the uninviting nature of cold air for being outside.
It makes sense. At a certain age, one I’ve reached, driving on roads and navigating sidewalks slick with ice and polished snow can be scary. To get outside requires more thought in dress and more intention. Just going out for a stroll can mean preparation. There is, too, the lure of a different place. The beaches of Florida, the culture of the Southwest and Mexico. A way to break up the year, give it a punctuation when work no longer provides it.
Still. I love the snow, the cold, the quiet, the coming of the inside season. The holiseason makes a good deal more intuitive sense with distinct seasonal changes, seasonal changes I find crucial to my own spiritual practice. Putting the garden to bed, letting it rest for a season plus also feels right to me. I would not want to continue my gardening season past the end of September, early October.
No. We’ll stay. Here. In Andover.
Winter Is Coming
Samhain Winter Moon
Winter Solstice. It comes with silent steps, the moon shining through leafless trees, scattering the snow with shadows. This is a moment between one turn and the next, a still point, a dark still point out of which will come light, enough light to thaw the ground, lure plants from beneath the earth, give them strength and plump up their fruits. But now, this night, is the culmination of darkness coming toward us one minute at a time until we reach the longest night of the year.
This waning of the light has killed back the plants of summer, shucked the leaves off the trees, frozen the rain so it falls as snow. This is the season that shows the other face of nature. This is earth as a receiver of the dead, as a particle disaggregator, a rapacious devourer of life. Earth as scavenger, cavern, dark sea bottom. This is the earth as whole, not only giving, but also taking.
When Hades comes for Persephone, he takes life back inside the earth. He changes her, makes her a part of his realm. In this marriage of Hades and Persephone we see death preceding life as the Mexica poet said.
In the dark and the quiet of the Winter Solstice night we can draw near to this truth. We can know that even our own death will do no more than take us back to the earth from which we came and that even that death will not be final as our consciousness is born anew with each birth and our physical self is born anew as plant and animal. What more wonder do we need at this time of year, in this, the Holiseason?
(Hades and Persephone: King and Queen of the Underworld)
Yes. Still Cold.
Samhain Winter Moon
Halfway to the Pole; Halfway to the Equator.
Samhain Winter Moon
As the nights grow longer and the temperature drops further, the silence here becomes holy. The weather of the arctic brings with it the isolation of the pole. Andover sits halfway between the equator and the pole, on the 45th degree of latitude. In the winter months we lean toward the pole; in the summer months we lean toward the equator.
Also, our position in the rough center of the North American land mass means that our weather has no direct oceanic modification; our weather comes to us raw and at no time is it rawer than during meteorological winter, December 1st to March 1st.
That’s why the winter solstice is such an important holiday for me. It is the moment when our polar relationship comes into play with the earth’s orbit around the sun. Our position relative to the sun created by our tilted axis and our position relative to the sun created by our orbit reinforce each other to create a dramatic time of cold darkness, silence and wonder both unmediated. It is a pure moment in the year, a suspension in night dominated by the arctic.