We must learn to invite the winter in. That is what this book is about: learning to recognise the process, engage with it mindfully, even to cherish it. We may never choose to winter, but we can choose how.”

Katherine May as quoted in Kate Kalloway’s Guardian book review Wintering review – learning to love the cold

I am someone who welcomes wintering. Generally speaking, I am grateful, I pay attention, and I pray. (I think that is a good wintering start.) It is because I embrace wintering that I know in my bones it is not easy. Our world is not built to winter. It all goes too fast. Relationships stay too shallow. Our chests literally forget how to breathe deeply. Why love the cold when paying attention may be painful, reflection may teach us things we don’t want to learn, and praying may leave us disappointed and isolated? Ultimately, loving cold is about loving life itself.

Kalloway writes, “Later, she [May] considers Carol Ann Duffy’s moving line: ‘Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer utters itself’, and buttresses it with her own experience: May explains ‘For my own part, they [prayers] open up a space in which to host thoughts that I would otherwise find silly or ridiculous: that voiceless awe at the passing of time. The way everything changes. The way everything stays the same. The way those things are bigger than I am, and more than I can hold.'” Embracing the bigness of it all. Wrapping our arms around noise and silence, stillness and change, and beginnings and ends. Finding comfort in uncertainty, as we know growth is part of life. Granting grace to ourselves and others. That is the what it means to love the cold.