Onset of winter

I don’t know how it happened, but it has become winter.

Just a week ago, I was watching the sumac leaves turn from yellow to deep red and the golden leaf laddened Bradford pear trees on Bridge Street in Narrowsburg become less dense with each passing day. Now the ground is white, and more times than not when I look out the window, a small snowflake drifts downward.

I don’t mind the coldness, probably because I’m simply not dealing with it, ensconced in my warm house, bundled when I walk from the house to the car.

I’m isolated, caught up in my own world, my own individual journey. I imagine that you are too. Your world might not be one of final papers on the theology of consumption or considering what multi-generational ministry looks like. It might be one where you’re figuring out your relationship to the winter holiday season, or figuring out how you will pay for heating expenses with shrinking resources.

While we’re not functioning in a vacuum, we are revolving in our own separate worlds.

I ponder this highly individualist ethic and consider this post Enlightenment concept that has stripped us all of understanding the import of community values. At the same time, I sense a shift in people’s thinking and the beginning of thinking of the whole.

The shift seems to have manifested rather suddenly, much like the advent of winter this year,. Although I know, it’s all part of an ancient and organic cycle, or layers of cycles, that I can be in tune with, once I get outside my individual world.