When snow covers the ground,  as it has done here in the past week, we are forced to go at a slower  pace of life. This is not a bad thing,  as modern conveniences can insulate us from the natural rhythms of day and night and of the seasons. For nature, winter is a time of slowing down and resting, sometimes of harshness, and of bareness. For us too, the outside season can remind us to return to basics, to see what is truly important. We can also pass through period of interior  winters, moments of darkness and  feelings of isolation. Growth and warmth can seem far away and we can be tempted to despair. However, we may find growth even in these moments or  as David Whyte says here, such times can be reminders to let go of the activities that bring us to the superficial margins of our lives and return to the conversation that gives us real life:

When we feel bereft of one form of support we can easily forget that it is because we might be meant to put that particular form of comfort aside and look to a fiercer more internally grounded stage of our maturity, one that might emanate from a simpler but surer ground than the outer sky of mirrors and monetary instruments we might have constructed for ourselves in the so-called real world. It also might be surprising to think that there are just as many forms of courage and creativity associated with disappearance and doing without; just as many satisfying elements of aliveness associated with a winter as with spring. This central, core conversation to which we return in each succeeding winter is both nourishing and deeply disturbing, it seems heedless of any flimsy structures we may have erected, it seems fiery in that it burns familiar things away and yet provides another form of warmth emanating from a more nested, interior hearth. In my experience the first necessity of an individual in finding this fiery, core conversation is a radical form of simplification. To get to the core conversation we have to withdraw from the edges. Whatever expenses we have been making at the margins of our lives in terms of emotions, finances or time-based commitment must be brought back to the central conversation that makes the most sense.

David Whyte.