The Gift of Winter
One morning last week I watched a handsome and brawny hawk make its way across Neck Road onto the branch of a naked maple tree. The hawk stared deliberately and intensely at me as I drove to my ministry at Mercy by the Sea. I have noticed lately an increase in the number of hawks soaring along Neck Road making their way to a tree home. In reflecting on this, I noted that with the sparse foliage at this time of the year, more is visible to us, and the number of hawks may not have increased at all, just my ability to see them. I realized that in winter we see more clearly and more deeply into the woods and into the world around us. We tend to hunker down in winter, look inside ourselves, and wait longingly for spring. As we do so, what was not clear to us before becomes clear — or, at least, clearer. This, I think, is the gift of winter.