First Church and Parish Dedham- Unitarian Universalist

Sermon     “Winter” The Rev. Rali Weaver

December 20, 2009

I probably don’t need to point out to any of you this has been cold, cold week.

I can’t complain however because cold is a perfect meditation for a sermon on winter.

Entering out into the cold of winter our senses are often shocked as we awake to the world around us.

The trees have lost their leaves, the ground is frozen and covered on and off with snow, our faces are affronted by bitter temperatures and we have a choice. We can either stay inside, and keep ourselves warm, or we can as you did this morning and as Andrew Wyeth suggests buck up against the elements and open our eyes to the beauty of the changing landscape.

My friends we are at a crossroad. A crossroad we approach each year at this time.

We sit on the forming edge of Winter.

The winter solstice is in fact a brief moment in time. This year winter begins at precisely 5:45 pm on December 21 (tomorrow). At that moment in time the earth’s axial tilt will be at the farthest point from the sun and that is when Winter will officially begin. At that moment we can choose to either hibernate or awaken.

In locations closer to the equator this moment in time might not seem so dramatic but we New Englanders know these shifts in the season are a part of both our physical and spiritual landscape.

To pretend that winter is not here on a morning such as this would be impossible.

Perhaps this is because as Mary Oliver suggests winter is a time when we must “measure the love we have always had for our own bones”. We must have love for our bones to properly wrap and prepare them to greet the cold and snow.

And this preparation is one key I believe we have to the spiritual gifts midwinter holds.

In summertime we can carelessly leave our homes without socks or shoes or even an overcoat but in winter we must insulate our senses against the cold. First there are the socks, and sometimes the long underwear, then the turtleneck the sweater or sweaters, the fleece and overcoat the scarf and hat and gloves and boots all careful protections we must put in place before we leave the house on a day such as today.

Putting on all those garments takes time and if we are attentive to what we are doing, we can make each sock and each glove we put on and act of care giving to our souls as surely as when we put on sunscreen in the summer.

This is what I mean when I say we are at a crossroads, we have a choice, we can approach this season with a presence of mind carefully nurturing our senses, or we can hunker down and bustle through hardly paying attention to the gifts that winter offers.

Last week at a friend’s suggestion I rented the film “A Christmas Story” which I had never seen before. If you haven’t seen it, don’t worry I don’t think I could ruin the plot for you, but if you have, perhaps you remember the scene where Ralphie’s mother dresses his litter brother in outdoor gear? She starts quite quickly wrapping him head to toe in layers. Shirts and sweaters and scarves and hats and jackets and a snowsuit are all put on in rapid fashion until Ralphie’s brother cannot move. His arms stuck out at his sides and in his protected state he is paralyzed not by the cold but against the cold.

I bring this up because I believe this is one way we could approach our preparations for winter. We could bustle and hurry and find ourselves paralyzed against this season. It will be over and we won’t have noticed it.

Or we could take our time.

Winter offers us an opportunity to slow down, to methodically open ourselves to a barren landscape, to recognize the contrasts.

There are simple pleasures that if we move too quickly we will miss.

The snow as it falls, the beauty of the icicles as they reflect the sunlight on a random blue skied day, the feel of coming in from the cold to a warm fireplace and hot cocoa after you have been shoveling that can ground your spirit in this season. And all it requires is our presence of mind.

If we open our eyes even these barren landscapes hold a mysterious beauty that can nourish our hearts.

In the way that loneliness prepares our hearts for love, and long courting makes the first touch more magical, in the way that the fruit that ripens on the vine is more sweet so too a long cold winter awakens our hearts to the treasures that surround us.

In that brief moment in time when the earth tilts so far from the sun our hearts can be trained to see the light even in dark places. The way we notice shadows in the light of the moon so too our bodies and minds and spirits can more fully embrace the warmth in cold and beauty in the barrenness of winter.

The greens that decorate our Meeting House at this season have long served as a reminder of that same divergence-- two contrasting things that can awaken us to the beauty within them both. Green in the midst of white, feeling true warmth in the midst of cold, relishing the food in the midst of fasting, embracing the joy in the midst of sorrow ---are all spiritual tools that if we allow them will enable us to feel more deeply and live more fully.

We use laurel mostly because I am allergic to the traditional New England pine. But Bay Laurel is a plant that was sacred to the Greek God Apollo and represented, prophecy, poetry and healing.

Holly (which we are about to sing about) was sacred to the druids who associated it with the winter solstice. And King Henry VIII wrote a love song you may have heard called “Green groweth the holy” which alluded to holly branches resisting the winter blasts by not changing their green hue, Truly the evergreens we see are precious to us this time of year for lending some color to our landscapes.

And so are our festive holiday celebrations of Hanukkah and Christmas and the New Year. Midwinter festivals and celebrations occurring on the longest night of the year, often calling for evergreens and food and light and communion with friends and loved ones are examples of cultural winter escapes that have evolved as traditions since the beginning of humankind.

And so let this service serve as a reminder to us all that we can approach this winter blast pragmatically wrapping ourselves up and buffering ourselves against the effects of the cold OR we can embrace the beauty of it all and live more fully amidst the winter blasts.

I suggest we do the latter and allow the green of the holly and pine and laurel to shepherd us, to awaken us to every part of the season. Holding our hearts in the magic of the sparkling snow as we embrace all the sweetness that we know lies beneath its icy crust.