The Second Half of Winter
Lent, and the most mysterious season of life
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The second half of winter, like the second half of life, is full of challenges and surprises.
I wish I could say that I’m as enthusiastic about the next few decades of my life as I am about the final months of winter. Spring beckons, but getting older is a formidable task. Mortality is a sobering thought.
But I’m not one to have my spirits dampened by sobering thoughts for long. When I wake up at 3 AM thinking about death, have a health challenge, or come face to face with all the things I haven’t yet done, I feel anxiety, but I also feel a surge of heroic effort rising within me.
The journey isn’t over until it's over, and even then, I'm not sure it’s over if you know what I mean.
I suspect you don’t think about life this way when you’re younger; I certainly never did. In the decades past fifty however, there’s an ever-increasing turn towards the spiritual life. I always had this inclination but it has amplified in this season of my life.
On The Symbolic World website, Jonathan Pageau describes himself as a French Canadian icon carver, public speaker, and YouTuber exploring the symbolic patterns that underlie our experience of the world and how these patterns emerge and come together, manifesting in religion, art, and popular culture.
I really like his take on the veracity of miracles. When speaking about the resurrection, Pageau points to how things return to life in nature as a pattern we can rely on. Spring follows winter, dormant bulbs and seeds sprout new life, forests renew themselves after a fire, some life forms reanimate after being frozen and then thawed, trees rot and support a host of fungi and other flora and fauna, many animals like bears hibernate and perhaps even more amazing are frogs who bruminate in the muddy bottoms of frozen ponds during the winter.
Life follows death; that pattern can be relied upon because we see it everywhere in the natural world. I would call this earth wisdom or maybe even earth magic, something we and our ancestors observed in the natural world that points to a higher universal truth. If we follow that pattern to its extreme case, we find that the human soul and the body (in a new form) return to life after physical death. That’s an interesting way to look at this idea. Rather than life after death being something that must supersede natural processes and thus be a supernatural event, it is merely the extension and full expression of a natural process we can observe over and over in nature.
I used to think that Samhain was the season in the year that was most closely aligned with mystery. Ushered by a psychopomp, whether Hecate, Persephone, Hermes, or the Grim Reaper Himself, into the Underworld seemed to be a journey through liminal space and into a numinous atmosphere. It was something the living could only visit in dreams and imaginal explorations. But now I am beginning to understand that Imbolc, a changeable and turbulent season, is where the true mysteries and miracles lie. This is the season in which death is transformed into life.
Lent
Lent is part of that transformative process. Ash Wednesday has just passed, and we are now fully aware of the struggle of winter and aging. Lent likely derives from Germanic roots and refers to the lengthening of days in spring. For our ancestors, late winter and early spring, Lent, was a treacherous time. Food stores were running out, new crops were not yet growing, and illness and disease were all around. Lent is a reminder of mortality with the hope of spring rebirth, offering a light at the end of the tunnel. Basically a description of a near-death experience.
This kind of yearly reckoning is good for our souls. Kings and paupers alike meet the same fate. Lent is a sober time that brings us back down to earth, to essentials, to humility, derived from humus, literally soil, the ultimate grounding experience. It’s an opportunity to course-correct, realign, and reestablish our connection to what is true, good, and beautiful, that is to say, the Divine.
As Lent works its magic, our vision clears, and we begin to see the reality of resurrection in nature and in our own souls.
I’d like to recommend to you Ash Wednesday for the Rest of Us from Shannon K. Evans at The Rewilded Life, filled with non-traditional Lenten Practices for nature lovers and the ecologically minded.
Also, last year’s essay Snakes, Wands and Ashes that looks at the season and weaves in wisdom from alchemy, Jung and Tarot is filled with interesting insights and ideas.
Lent as a Season of Life
When I was training to earn my Creative Depth Coaching Certification back in 2016 with Cat Caracelo, we did quite a bit of work with ages and stages. In Cat’s unique schema, pre-birth, that is, womb-time, corresponds to Spirit. Then, looking at the later decades of life, we find 56-63 as The Age of Translation, Redefining Self and Purpose. Chronologically, that is where I am right now.
Next, at ages 63-70, we find The Age of Deep Listening and Amplified Choice and Voice. At 70-77, we discover Energetic Realignment, Unraveling, and Reweaving. From 77-84, the encounter is with Traveling through the Veil/Mist, Seeking and Finding Wisdom. From 84-91, we experience Sifting and Sorting, Recasting Meaning and Value Placement. At 91-98, we come to Exploring Dreamtime, Spirit Gathering, and Releasing. Coming close to the end at 98-106, The Age of Releasing Breath meets us. Finally, we come full circle to 106+, which takes us home to Spirit, just as in the pre-birth womb-time.
Ages and stages are a chronological reality in our physical life, but in our internal world, our soul-self is able to move back and forth across time, experiencing many ages and stages at once in varying degrees of intensity and awareness. We are many ages at once, just as we are many selves at once. My initial healing work was around early adolescence, a time in life that is a critical and difficult stage for everyone.
Somewhere in this intriguing description of the later stages of life, we find the late winter Lenten season of our interior life. This season, whether it is chronological for you or a felt, interior state of being, is close to Spirit and touches on many potent themes that you may want to explore during the weeks of Lent as we make our way through the difficult last days of winter propelled on by the hope of spring renewal.
Here are some of the words and phrases from the Ages and Stages system that offer powerful portals of exploration through art making, written journaling, photography, poetry, and more.
All of these complex and intriguing inner experiences in the mysterious second half of life prepare us for the inevitable rebirth waiting for us. Lent is a time of deprivation meant to clear the mind and invigorate the soul. It is a spiritual practice designed to shake loose what needs to fall away and help you confront what lies beyond mortal life.
Pippin: I didn't think it would end this way.
Gandalf: End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it.
Pippin: What? Gandalf? See what?
Gandalf: White shores, and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise.
Pippin: Well, that isn't so bad.
Gandalf: No. No, it isn't.
The Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King by J.R.R Tolkein
Where are you in the timeline of Ages and Stages? Where are you located chronologically? Can you give your own season of life a name that captures the essence of where you are? Do you fit into one of the designations even if it’s not your chronological age? Has one of the age descriptions caught your attention? Is it asking you to dive deep and explore what its qualities might mean for you right now?
The comments section is a safe and welcoming space to share your insights and experiences.
Comments and conversation are always appreciated and enjoyed, so feel free to let your voice be heard. I read them all and try to respond to each one.
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"At 70-77, we discover Energetic Realignment, Unraveling, and Reweaving. From 77-84, the encounter is with Traveling through the Veil/Mist, Seeking and Finding Wisdom. " Your post did get my attention, Jan, because I have just experienced the "unraveling" of my life like never before. Loss of home, having to release and find new home for my most beloved feline "companions / familiars" (this nearly broke me), and the death of a house mate who could not cope with this transition during these winter months and decided to leave her body. I have been "lossing" and reeling and grieving for several months now during the first half of winter; feeling like I have been dropped into an unknown landscape where there is no star map or road map to guide. I am definitely in 'energetic realignment' as I reach out to shaman ways and spiritual ways to reweave. This takes as long as it takes and in the meantime, mantras arise to steady me like: "just wash my spirit clean" or take all that I have been, my beliefs and daily routines and ways of conversing with the world and move them on into something new....wash my spirit clean. The unknown is a daily ache in my gut as I begin my travels beyond the veil and certainly into the mists. Will there be a reweave or only a continue disassembling, I ask.....