Winter

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

— Jellaludin Rumi,

This is a season I’ve been fairly content to avoid the past three years. There is something about the deep cold that settles into my bones; a physical sensation that connects me deeply with my sorrow. The winter we returned from Bolivia back in 2009 was one of the coldest seasons in my life. One of the hardest parts of saying yes to moving to Mexico in 2015 was the fear of knowing we’d have to re-enter. I had almost convinced myself that the reason it was so hard was because we hadn’t built enough time for grief and processing into our schedule (we gave ourselves 6 days between the goodbye of our Bolivian neighborhood and full-time seminary with part-time jobs). And this time, we knew better.  There were weeks of space built in. Beautiful rituals around goodbye and hello. And yet, here I am, in the midst of the winter season once more, entertaining all kinds of rowdy guests, as the Rumi poem invites me to call them.

The guests come as a result of various life happenings; the loneliness of transition, the complications of my children adjusting to US school, the challenge of finding new community while reconnecting with others. But I see the challenges as simply the clothing the guests wear; their presence is connected to something deeper.

Early in the season, I was talking with my neighbor who has spent much of his life in a warmer place, and does not love the cold. After a little mutual complaining, he pointed to a big tall pine tree at the edge of his yard. He said for years it had a fungus that he couldn’t manage to get rid of. He tried different kinds of remedies to no avail. “Then, last year,” he said, “there was a deep cold spell, and something about the cold froze off the fungus. Look at the tree now, even more beautiful than before.”

As I pass by the tree on my way out of our neighborhood, I look up at it and smile. I ask myself, “What is there in me that really needs the deep cold in order to transform? What are these rowdy guests trying to tell me? What do I need to let go of that only the deepest cold can freeze off?”

Plenty.

And I eagerly await what this time of clearing out will bring….