The Sauntering Pilgrim

Winter’s coming. There, I’ve said it, what everyone knows and few want to acknowledge. Its prelude is October’s riot of color, followed by November’s revealing austerity exposing the contours of the earth that are hidden beneath summer’s rich foliage. Then winter.

Winter comes to everyone at one time or another, not the season on the calendar but the season of our lives when hope seems in as short supply as the light and it takes real effort and much grace to keep the heart from icing over. It can start in failure or in humiliation, the anxiety of an illness, the awareness of life’s brevity, or the grief of loss. It can be as subtle as a moment of personal doubt or as raucous as a national political upheaval, arriving as suddenly as the slamming of a door or as slowly as the moon’s next phase. But it comes, and we must figure out how to deal with it.

Here at home, a national winter is upon us, its icy fingers already infiltrating our lives. It looks at this early stage a lot like the national collapse Israel experienced two-and-a-half millennia ago, only this one is coming not from a geopolitical power shift but from domestic decay and collapse. The fabric of community that has held us together is unraveling, and not knowing whether we can stop it and repair the damage in time to prevent total collapse, we must deal with it.

The best way to begin, I believe, is to be still and watch, the way Habakkuk thought to do during the time of injustice and violence that led to ancient Israel’s collapse and exile. “I will stand at my watchpost,” he wrote, “and station myself on the rampart; I will keep watch to see what [God] will say to me and what [God] will answer concerning my complaint” (Hab. 2:1). So the first thing I know to do is station myself where I can watch to see what God will do.

First of all, I’m not going to obsess about the endless flow of news that streams online and on television and in print, although it’s important to know what’s going on in the world. Instead, I’m going to follow the example of the psalmist. I’m going to stand at the watchpost of stillness. “Be still before the Lord,” the psalmist wrote, “and wait patiently for [God] (Ps. 37:7), remembering that “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble” (Ps. 46:1).

There, I will wait to see what God reveals to me. I’ll remember that the first act of divine revelation is creation itself and that nature is the first scripture. “Ever since God created the world,” St. Paul wrote, “God’s everlasting power and divinity – however invisible – are there for the mind to see in the things that God has made” (Romans 1:20). Like Shakespeare’s Duke Senior, I’ll find a perspective from which I will look, and look, and look, until I find those “tongues in trees, books in running brooks, / Sermons in stones, and [I hope and pray] good in every thing” (As You Like It, act 2, scene 1).

I will follow the advice of Job. “But ask the animals,” he said, “and they will teach you, the birds of the air, and they will tell you; ask the plants of the earth, and they will teach you, and the fish of the sea will declare to you” (Job 12:7-8). I will stand in silence and listen to what nature says. I will sit at the feet of the sequoias, trees that were seedlings a thousand years before Habakkuk stationed himself on the ramparts of his nation.

Sequoias have lived through droughts, fires, storms, and climate changes that would kill almost anything else. Most people think they survive because they’re big, but that’s not the reason. They’re the tallest tree in the world but their roots go only six to twelve feet deep. A 300-foot tree with shallow roots makes no sense from an engineering perspective and should be no match for a big storm.

But here’s the key: sequoias don’t survive alone. Their root systems spread fifty to eighty feet wide and interweave with every other sequoia around them. They share nutrients, water, and structural support. When storms blow in, they support each other. The forest is the system, not the individual trees. Sequoias don’t argue, they stand together; they don’t stake out right and wrong, they stand together; they don’t divide into factions or camps, they stand together; they don’t aim for winning or losing, they stand together.

The sequoias tell me that if we are to survive this storm, this dark wintery season, we must do so together. We must remember that the work of God is the work of reconciliation (2 Cor. 5:19). We must resist and reject every weak, insecure, power-hungry, and ego-driven effort to peel us away one by one and divide us from each other. We must remember that our survival depends upon keeping the roots of community healthy and strong.

Winter’s coming with storms and stresses we rarely know, and it seems to be already here. It’s time to listen to the sequoias. They don’t pretend it’s still summer and that winter is not happening. They prepare. They rely on their roots, on their connections with each other, and on sharing their meager resources.

If we cannot change the weather or the season, we can at least rely on what keeps us standing through the dark and cold of winter. We can reach out to those nearest us, we can tend the roots that bind us together, we can share whatever resources we have, the meager loaves and fishes that will feed a multitude (Mark 6:30-44).

We can hold fast Habakkuk’s hope that “there is still a vision for the appointed time. If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come” (Hab. 2:3). Then one day we may be able to say with the sober, open-eyed, hopeful realism of Albert Camus, “In the midst of hate, I found there was, within me, an invincible love. In the midst of tears, I found there was, within me, an invincible smile. In the midst of chaos, I found there was, within me, an invincible calm. In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.”