Returning to a Time of Winter: A Gentle Reflection on Pause & Renewal
Life has been asking a lot lately; the weight of my practice, the cries of the world, and the quiet stirrings inside me that feel like unfinished threads from my own dark night of the soul. There are days when something deep within aches, not in crisis, but in recognition… as if parts of me are still finding their way into the light.
Through it all, the constants have been my personal writing and my contemplative prayer group. We’re reading The Tears of Things by Richard Rohr, and somehow each time we open the book, he greets me exactly where I am. Today we read about Jonah and reward-punishment thinking, and I found myself wondering:
Have I been in my own whale’s belly?
Held in a pressure I can’t push through… sitting with questions that don’t resolve… listening to paradoxes that won’t collapse neatly into answers.
It’s a strange, holy kind of waiting and sometimes the most spiritual thing we can do is pause.
As we move toward winter, I feel that invitation more clearly. November has always felt like a doorway month to me, not quite an ending, not yet a beginning, just a soft threshold where we turn inward and retrieve parts of ourselves we haven’t tended in a while. A season meant to be entered gently.
So that’s what I’m doing now.
Returning to a time of winter.
Not with pressure.
Not with perfection.
Just a quiet presence.
For this next season, I’ll be sharing a blog here and there nothing rushed, nothing forced. Just something sustainable, something rooted in the pace my own life is asking of me right now.
If you’ve been stretched thin or pulled into versions of yourself you didn’t expect, may this be a reminder that you, too, can choose a small return. A soft wintering. A moment to gather yourself in a time of deep reflection.
If there’s something stirring in you, a question, a reflection, or a topic you’d like me to explore in a future post you’re welcome to comment below. However, if you prefer a more private conversation, you can always reach me at www.themosaichouse.com/contact
Until next time,
Marie