Winter Blessings and Beauties, Day 7: Escape Into A Good Book

One of the delicious things about winter is the way the long, dark evenings give you the perfect excuse to completely lose yourself in a good book. I don't know about you, but I can get so immersed in a book that I become completely unaware of my surroundings. Which may not be a good thing - luckily the house has never caught fire when I've been reading!

In recent years I've been enchanted to learn of the Icelandic tradition of Jólabókaflóðið, which translates roughly as 'Christmas Book Flood'. The story goes that in Iceland during World War II, paper was one of the few materials not rationed and as a result it became customary to give books as gifts for Christmas. In Iceland, gifts are exchanged on Christmas Eve and people usually spend the rest of the day reading their new books and drinking hot chocolate. Doesn't that sound like sheer heaven! I definitely think this is a tradition that should be more widely adopted. In fact - why wait until Christmas Eve? Let's start cosying up in the evenings with a good book and a large, indulgent mug of hot chocolate.

While we're at it, let's all support our small, local independent bookshops. This is my nearest independent bookshop, and the good news is that it - and many others across the UK - are banding together to sell online so that they can compete on a more level playing field with giant corporations like Amazon. Let's face it, Jeff Bezos is already the richest man on the planet, he doesn't need any more of my money. But my small, local bookseller does. So from now on, that's where I'll be buying my books (there or the local charity shops). If you'd like to follow suit, start here.  

If you need any suggestions to get you started, may I recommend these?

• Ben Aaronovitch's 'Rivers of London' series (beginning with 'Rivers of London')
• 'The Lost Words' by Jackie Morris and Robert Macfarlane
• 'Braiding Sweetgrass' by Robin Wall Kimmerer
• 'The Young Visiters' by Daisy Ashford - still the funniest book I know!
• Phil Rickman's 'Merrily Watkins' series of supernatural thrillers, which starts with 'The Wine of Angels'.
• 'Witch Light' by Susan Fletcher
• 'The Fifth Sacred Thing' by Starhawk
• 'Dark Matter' by Michelle Paver is an incredibly creepy ghost story if you fancy something chilling!
• 'If Women Rose Rooted' by Sharon Blackie

Winter Blessings and Beauties: Day 7

Escape into a Good Book

Escape into the pages of an old favourite or choose a brand new book to explore. Find yourself a cosy corner where you can curl up in comfort with your book and a big mug of your favourite hot drink. Maybe light a scented candle, put on some soft music, snuggle under a throw... enjoy this special me-time and the opportunity to travel to infinite worlds from the comfort of your armchair. If it's cold and gloomy outside, so much the better!

Winter Blessings and Beauties, Day 6: A Winter Walk

It's a gloriously sharp, bright frosty morning. A soft haze of mist hangs in the valley. The sky is blue, the fields are white-sparkled frost, the low slanting sun is golden. I love the way the whiteness of the fields peeks through the silhouetted bronze trees.

The cats accompany me up the lane, padding on cold paws over tarmac and fallen leaves.

Tansy keeps a sharp eye out and an ear cocked for any interesting rustles in the hedge...

And over us all, the disseminating moon sinks slowly to her rest in the morning sky

 Winter Blessings and Beauties: Day 6

Winter Walk

If you can, get out for a walk and enjoy the sights and sounds of early winter. Take a few photos if you can, and jot down a few words which describe the small beauties you encounter. By doing so the pleasure of the walk can be preserved and relived long after the memory would have been lost. Every walk is different and unique, and worthy of remembering.

Winter Blessings and Beauties, Day 5: Recipe - Apple and Sultana Compote

Apples are a wonderful winter fruit. Depending on the variety and how they have been stored, apples can last right through the darkest of winter days and into the spring. I have been really enjoying the apple harvest this year. A friend gifted me with some delicious windfalls and the wonderful local zero-waste shop - where I have been doing the bulk of our food shopping since Covid-19 struck - has had some interesting apple varieties in during the autumn that in all honesty I probably wouldn't have had the opportunity to try if I was still frequenting the supermarket. 

Not only have I been eating fresh apples, I've also been trying different recipes. I made some delicious apple, blackberry and sloe jelly last month, and I also stewed up plenty of apples with blackberries while the brambles were producing prolifically. These have been put in the freezer to enjoy later in the year. But at the moment my favourite way to enjoy apples is for breakfast - apple and sultana compote served with a dollop of thick, creamy Greek yogurt and a sprinkling of granola to add a bit of crunch. It's so delicious I think you could serve it as a dessert!

This is my compote recipe if you'd like to give it a try.

Winter Blessings and Beauties: Day 5

Apple and Sultana Compote

Ingredients

3-4 Cooking Apples, such as Bramley

A generous handful of sultanas

A knob of butter

Water

Sugar

Ground cinnamon

Zest of a lemon

Method

Peel and core the apples and chop into smallish pieces. Melt the butter in a saucepan over a low heat and add the apples. Add a little water to stop the apples sticking and simmer over a low heat, stirring regularly. Add a good shake of ground cinnamon, the sultanas and the finely grated zest of a lemon. The compote is ready when the apples have broken down into a soft purée. Remove from the heat and taste - add sugar if required to your taste. 

I keep the Apple Compote in the fridge where it will last for several days (unless I eat it all first!). My favourite way to eat it is with Greek yogurt and granola, but you could also make a classic crumble, sponge or cobbler topping for it and enjoy it with custard or cream.

 

Winter Blessings and Beauties, Day 4: Winter Senses

 

Quite a few years ago, when this blog and I were both (relatively!) young, I wrote a series of vignettes about 'Seasonal Senses', one each for Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter.

I found it a really interesting way to mindfully engage with each season, trying to find five quintessential sights, smells, sounds, tastes and sensations that spoke of each one. I still enjoy reading them back to this day. Humans tend to have a bias towards one particular sense - for many of us it's vision - so it's an interesting exercise to more fully engage with all five senses. For today's Winter Blessings and Beauties exercise, I would like to encourage you to try it too!

Winter Blessings and Beauties: Day 4

Winter Senses

In your journal, write down five sights, smells, sounds, tastes and sensations that sum up the experience of winter for you (you can take a peek at my own list first if that helps). It may take a little while, and I found some senses were easier than others! If you need inspiration, try stepping out into the garden to sniff/taste the air and see what you can spy, hear and feel. Or look in the kitchen cupboards for reminders of the special foods and drinks or favourite recipes that you enjoy during winter. Check your wardrobe - are there favourite winter clothes waiting to be worn? Do you use a particular cosmetic, soap or scent during winter?  Does your family have any winter traditions, hobbies or special activities at this time of year? Are there any particular plants, trees, birds or animals that you seem to see during the winter months?

You may find that once the ideas start coming, you can easily find more than five for each sense!

Winter Blessings and Beauties, Day 3: Winter Tree Meditation

 

It's a cold, bright beautiful day here. The wet, stormy weather of the last few days has at last departed, leaving in its wake a brisk blue sky with a definite nip in the air.

It has also left a lot of bare branches. The leaves seemed to hang on for a long time this autumn, perhaps because until now it's been pretty mild. I've enjoyed watching the colour changes, as the world has gradually been re-made in copper and gold. At the end of each day, when I haven't been working I've made a point of going out to watch the sunset, noting at the same time the gradually changing palette of the valley. 

Now most of the leaves have gone - a few still hang on - and I realised this morning for the first time that I've never really paid attention to the order in which the trees lose their leaves. Every spring I watch the woods and hedgerows for the first splashes of colour (usually the yellow powder puffs of willow catkins and then the bright green of hawthorn leaves). But in autumn I watch the leaves colour and fall but don't pay the same attention. This morning I have noticed that it seems to be mostly the oaks and beeches which are still holding their bronzed leaves while the neighbouring trees are almost completely denuded. A few hazels still have foliage - some even have some green leaves - but this may be due to their more sheltered positions. Do any trees still have leaves where you are?

This year I am appreciating the simple beauty of bare branches silhouetted against the sky. I love the pliancy with which they bend in the wind, the graceful resilience with which they withstand whatever the elements send their way. There are many lessons we could learn from trees.

Winter Blessings and Beauties: Day 3

Winter Tree Meditation

Stand with your feet hip width apart. Take some slow, deep breaths. Notice where you may be holding any tension in your body - shake it out and relax. Continue to breathe slowly and deeply. 

Now imagine your body is a tree. Your toes curl roots down into the earth beneath you. Your legs and torso are a sturdy trunk, supporting the branches of your head and arms. Raise your arms in the air like branches and let them sway gently in the breeze. Imagine any worries or negative thoughts or stresses as leaves which no longer serve you. Sway your branches and as you do, let these unwanted leaves go, swirling softly to the ground where the natural processes of the earth transform them into compost to nourish new growth. 

What else do you need to let go of? What no longer serves you? Imagine each thing as a leaf on one of your branches, and when you are ready let it go, gently and easily. It is time. 

How light do your branches feel now that all those unwanted leaves have been shed? Feel the strength and flexibility you now have. Imagine how easily you can withstand any storms that come your way now that you are no longer weighed down by those dead leaves.

Feel the life force that still pulses within you. And feel how, where each dead leaf was once attached to your branches, a new, small bud has formed. Once you have cleared away those things which are no longer needed, there is space for new and wonderful things to grow in their place. What kind of bright and beautiful new leaves will you choose to grow in the coming months?

When you are ready, take a deep slow breath and come back to your human body, drawing your roots back up from the earth where they become human toes again, patting your legs and arms and head and torso where they have become a soft, strong human body again. Say your name aloud three times.

*****

When you can, put on your coat and go out to find a tree which has shed its leaves in readiness for the winter. Look closely at its twigs. This years leaves may be gone, but buds - each one a promise of the greening of spring - are already there.      

Winter Blessings and Beauties, Day 2: Work/Life Balance

This morning Facebook reminded me in a rather timely fashion of something I wrote  a few years back for Pagan Pages e-zine (you can find my article here). It seems related to this new project about embracing winter, as it is a piece questioning our attitudes to the dark, and we are - no doubt about it - now in the 'dark half' of the year. It set me pondering about the reasons we seem to have a hard time being positive about the winter. The cold, dark, damp days when we have to bundle up against the elements are one obvious reason, and the article I have linked to hopefully begins the process of re-thinking those attitudes. But another, perhaps less obvious reason, appeared to me when I began this series of posts. 

When I came up with the idea of 'Winter Blessings and Beauties' I wanted to find a short, succinct title that would sum up what I was trying to convey about winter. I wanted something positive and encouraging, something that was cosy but not boring, something that conveyed the idea of all the positive aspects of winter. Words like 'Hygge' and 'Cwtch' (from the Danish and Welsh respectively) seemed good, but I wanted an English equivalent. I wanted to include the idea that winter should be a time of rest and renewal for ourselves, a breathing space attuned to the slower, deeper rhythms of nature in winter. In search for such a word, I turned to an online Thesaurus and looked for synonyms for words like 'rest' and 'relax'. As I browsed through the results returned by the thesaurus - branching off along the way into a kind of mind-map of words around these ideas - I was shocked. There were so many judgemental, negative words relating to this idea. Just a small selection - 'idle, laze, loaf, loll, slack off, bum, dilly dally, loiter, dawdle, fritter away, wallow, indolence, sloth, vegetate, waste time, lounge around...'. Oh dear! It seems like taking some time out for yourself to rest and recuperate is not really seen as a good thing.

Why should this be the case? Presumably it's partly the legacy of the Protestant Work Ethic which stresses the virtue of hard work as a path to salvation. It's all well and good to encourage people to take a share of the work that needs doing to benefit the community as a whole, but such absolutist thinking devalues anyone who is not able to contribute in this way due to disability or illness. I do not believe that personal worth should be based predominantly on levels of productivity. I also strongly believe that people should be encouraged to self-care by taking the time they need to rest and restore themselves. The trouble is, the work ethic is so thoroughly engrained in our society that we all tend to beat ourselves up, either consciously or unconsciously when we are not being what we think of as 'productive'. 

I'm as guilty of this as anyone. I was married for years to a workaholic, who used constant work as a way to avoid feeling, acknowledging or examining any of his more difficult emotions. No wonder the relationship fell apart! But what lesson did I take from this? Unfortunately not the right one. Guilt at the failure of my marriage turned into guilt that I had not worked hard enough to match T's efforts, and after a period of stunned inactivity while I licked my wounds and tried to make sense of the wreckage of my life I threw myself back into paid work. When my marriage ended I had been out of paid employment for some time for a variety of reasons (in the years leading up to my divorce my 'job' had been staying home and managing the smallholding), and I found it hard to find a single full time job. But in the end I amassed a collection of part-time jobs which at least kept my head above water financially. And every time more part-time work appeared, anxious about my lack of job security and the resulting constant threat of poverty I said yes. And yes. And yes. By the time the first Covid lockdown hit this spring, I was working a total of 6 different part time jobs over 6 or 7 days a week. I was permanently exhausted. In this respect lockdown was actually a blessing for me. I was unable to work any of my jobs, and ultimately several of them came to a permanent end because of the virus. By the time the first period of lockdown ended I was left with only two jobs out of 6, and a 2½  day work week. Yet to my surprise this has been my salvation. I have become incredibly frugal (even so I've had to dip into my savings), but my quality of life has improved immeasurably. And paradoxically my anxiety about a penurious old age has lessened. I'm living in the now instead of feeling guilty about the past and anxious about the future, and my mental and physical health has improved dramatically. I am working on things which don't necessarily put money in my pocket - such as growing some of our food, writing, cooking proper meals from scratch, making and mending - but which give me a huge sense of satisfaction and well-being. And I am taking time too to rest and recuperate when I need it. My sister has been telling me for years to 'put on your own oxygen mask first' - she was right. 

So let's try to shift that 'work good, self-care bad' way of thinking to a more balanced viewpoint, shall we? We can take a valuable lesson from the natural world during the winter months - all living beings need periods of 'time out', time to rest and recuperate, breathe and take stock, allowing our bodies and minds space to process and heal. Just as we sleep at night to rest and recharge ourselves, let's take the gift offered by winter of a rejuvenating period of slowness, introspection, quiet, dark, and rest. 

Winter Blessings and Beauties: Day 2

Work:Life Balance

On paper or in your journal, draw a circle. Divide it into equal 'pie slices' and label each slice with a different area of your life: Work, Leisure, Family, Friends, Significant Other/Love, Finances, Spirituality, Health (you can create your own categories if these ones are not relevant to you). Then use a coloured pencil to fill in each slice from the centre outwards according to how satisfied you are with each area of your life. So if you are really happy with your health at the moment, colour in most of the Health slice from centre to outside edge - and if you feel you've not been able to engage with your Spirituality lately, only colour in a small piece of that slice near the centre of the chart. You can use different colours for each slice if you like. Remember that no one is going to see this apart from you, so be totally honest. When you have filled in each slice, look at the chart as a whole. Which areas are you very happy with? Which areas need some attention? Which areas are being neglected? 

Use your journal to explore how you feel about each area of your life. How could you improve things so that the areas are more balanced with each other? What would a balanced life look like? How could you get from here to there? Remember, you don't have to completely rearrange your life overnight. You don't have to find all the answers straight away. But if you can see some small steps that you could take, take note - and begin to implement them. Keep a record of each step you take, and record your progress. 

It might be interesting to re-visit this exercise at the Winter Solstice and then again at Imbolc, to measure the changes as they unfold?

Winter Blessings and Beauties, Day 1: Looking Forward to Winter

 

The Welsh name for Samhain is Nos Calan Gaeaf, which means Winter's Eve. That makes today, 1st November, the Celtic first day of winter. Of course, there are several different definitions of the first day of winter. Some people count it as the day the clocks turn back from British Summer Time to GMT. Meteorological Winter begins on 1st December and runs through to the end of February. Astronomical Winter begins at the Winter Solstice and ends at the Spring Equinox (this year 21st December 2020 - 20th March 2021). But it seems to me, if as Pagans we follow a calendar rooted in the rhythms of the Earth, it makes sense to name winter as that period between the day after Samhain (when days have grown short and cold and vegetation dies back) through to Imbolc (when the days noticeably begin to lengthen and the first snowdrops and catkins emerge). Winter is part of the constant change we see around us in the natural world, another station on the turning wheel.

It saddens me that too often it seems winter is seen as something to be endured, a miserable period of cold dark days we have to hunker down and get through in order to get to the brighter days of spring and summer. That's a bit sad really isn't it? Surely there are as many pleasures to be found in winter as any other season. To think otherwise is a failure of the imagination. This year I am determined to really connect with winter and consciously appreciate all its unique and special treasures - not least because this year with the Coronavirus pandemic it seems likely that there will be extra winter challenges to negotiate, such as lockdowns and restrictions on socialising. My hope is that seeking out and appreciating the special blessings of winter will offset the difficulties imposed by the Pandemic. 

Want to join me in this adventure? I plan to post something every day on this topic, right through to Imbolc at the beginning of February - assuming I can be that disciplined! I hope to include seasonal ritual ideas, meditations, craft ideas, journalling prompts, recipes... and no doubt other stuff I haven't even thought of yet! 

To start with, here is my Winter Blessing and Beauty for today:

Winter Blessings and Beauties: Day 1

In your journal, make a list of things you are looking forward to this winter. it will serve as a reminder of all the pleasurable things, big and small, that you can promise yourself lie ahead in the next few months. Here are some ideas to get you started

• Which special occasions will be coming up for you between now and Imbolc? Make a list of birthdays, anniversaries, holidays and festivals, trips etc
• What seasonal foods do you particularly enjoy during the winter? Hot chocolate? Roast chestnuts? Mince pies? Mulled wine? Home made marmalade? Sloe gin?
• What special things do you enjoy doing during winter? Going for a brisk walk through the frosty woods? Soaking in a long hot bath and then snuggling into your cosy PJs and woolly slippers? Wrapping Christmas presents for your loved ones? Curling up by the fire with a good book?