I enjoy reading Addie Zierman’s blog as she wrestles through new phases in her spiritual journey. I especially resonated with her recent post about spiritual seasons in our lives, and I want to share a portion of her thoughts with you. To read the whole article (well worth it!) go to her site, Addie Zierman: Faith Reimagined.
“…I went searching the Internet other day for other ways of marking the seasons, which is what I do when I’m not satisfied with the language I have. And I came across the six-season cycle of the North American Cree. It’s a cycle that includes Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter of course…but that adds two additional season: Midiskāw or the “Freeze Up” of ice and Minoskamin, or “Break Up” of ice.
It makes sense. The Cree are a People whose world was, at one time, tied to the river and to their ability to travel on it.
They were once a migratory people, traveling with the seasons and with the animals, so of course they understood that between fall and winter there is the season of “Freeze Up,” where the water is changing, solidifying — neither open water nor sturdy ice, but something in between, something in process.
Of course they knew that before the flowers and the berries and the drunken summertime honeybees, there had to be the tumultuous yet hidden “Break Up” season — the sound of drumming coming from the river the only hint of the vast changing happening beneath the remaining layers of ice.
…Sometimes in religious contexts, we talk about “faith seasons.” Spring. Summer. Fall. Winter. It’s a metaphor that, however cliché it may be, resonates with me.
My own faith deconstruction began after years of trying and trying and trying to thrive, to grow, to bear fruit, to be in the light and having no success.
I had no language for this dryness except for that of my own failure and inadequacy. (If I just tried harder, read the Bible more, got better “plugged-in,” I would be certainly be on the rise instead of in this free-fall.)
When I began to understand the cyclical nature of the spiritual journey, it felt like an essential kind of naming. I wasn’t failing; it was just winter.
While things may have looked dead, that didn’t mean that they were. Essential activity was happening under the surface, and the dormancy wasn’t failure but its own kind of growth.
….The reason it doesn’t feel like spring yet at the ground level of my soul is because it isn’t. It’s that in-between place, that break-up of ice, where things are happening beneath the surface.
The flowers are not yet blooming, the snow is still piled high, but underneath it all, the river persistently, invisibly drumming itself free of the ice.
Perhaps you have heard the “faith seasons” metaphor, but it never quite resonated with you. Maybe that’s because your soul doesn’t live at the perfect intersection of four, three-month seasons.
Maybe your soul has a subtropic climate where there is no fall, winter, spring summer — just the rainy season and the dry season swinging pendulum-like, back and forth.
Maybe the language of the lunar calendar better describes the rhythm of your soul.
You seem to move through regular cycles of filling and waning…growing large and round and bright with the fullness of God…and then slowly diminishing until you feel like you’re almost gone…only to start to fill up again.
It seems to me that the weather of our souls must be at least as varied as the multitude of climates in this world.
…There are those of you whose cycles follow the four seasons more closely but whose inner-landscapes are regularly overlaid with violent acts of nature: tornado season, where everything flies into chaos; hurricane season, where you find yourself underwater; wildfire season, where the whole thing seems to burn itself to the ground.
Maybe you’re not a train-wreck or an incurable cynic or a magnet for disaster. Maybe your soul just lives in freaking TORNADO ALLEY or Northern California or on the Gulf of Mexico. Maybe this is all just part of your regular, beautiful, essential cycle.
Like many other things in life and in faith, so much depends on finding the name of a thing.
If you know that your life swings from the dry to rainy season, you can name the scarcity and the drought for what it is: not failure, just the dry season.
Necessary. Part of a whole. Temporary.
If you can name the space between tundra and tulips — the breaking up season — then you might have the patience to wait it out, to keep believing that better things are coming, that God is at work in the frozen places whether you can feel it or not.”
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I think she’s right on about spiritual seasons. There are ups and downs- times of growth, and plateaus where nothing seems to be happening. And not just once, either. That’s the essential nature of a spiritual journey!
The spiritual path is just that: a road that climbs high, and can dip low, can be interesting and exciting, or drab and colorless. The way is not straight and it’s often not easy, but it’s a trip like no other, and is filled with learning, insights and adventure!
“It is more important to go slow and gain the lessons you need along the journey then to rush the process and arrive at your destination empty.” Germany Kent
“Living a spiritual life may not be easy. It demands total authenticity. It brings you to dance to a unique song that only you can hear fully, and sometimes you dance alone because no others can hear the music.” Debra Moffitt
Check out this video– https://biggeekdad.com/2011/01/yosemite-frazil-ice/ It ties in with Addie’s metaphors.
See also:
The Circle of Life: The Heart’s Journey Through the Seasons by Joyce Rupp and Macrina Wiederkehr
Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others by Barbara Brown Taylor
Thank you, Ginny! The recognition and naming of life cycles?? Of course!!!
I certainly needed to read this to reorganize my thoughts and gain some perspective.
Love you…