winter's encroachment

Sea is starting to act winterlike, originally uploaded by Lalallallala.

'Jeremiah reminded me that the pain that comes from one’s identity, that grows out of the response to a call, can’t be escaped or pushed aside. It must be gone through. He led me into the heart of pain, forcing me to recognize that to answer a call as a prophet, or a poet for that matter, is to reject the authority of credentials, of human valuation of any kind, accepting only the authority of the call itself…

It was the prophet who helped me understand that there wasn’t much I could do about my situation, except to wait it out. I watched ice form on the river outside my window one Sunday afternoon and felt a loneliness more intense than any I could remember since childhood. The day had grown incredibly still – I spent much of that fall in solitude – and the silence was so deep it seemed poised at the edge of eternity. When it became too much to bear, words came to me: ‘the necessary other, a reminder and reproach; the ground of winter, watchful and chill, no longer looking for what is not there’.

I found this image of winter’s encroachment curiously hopeful. Nearly empty, I could not hope to fill myself – certainly not with human companionship, although when it did come that fall even small acts of kindness and hospitality were resplendent – and I began to sense that this was exactly as it should be.

God wanted me empty, alone, silent, and watchful.'

-Kathleen Norris, The Cloister Walk