The cold comes crisply, sharply and at times with a biting wind. My body closes, hunches down, trying to enfold upon itself, to safe guard its warmth. Each morning, I go down the stairs to open my door and stand on my small stoop to feel the air and greet the day. I take down the woolens that I have hung from the lamp next to my door. I love that the frozen air is my washing machine for my wool sweaters and leggings. I bring the freshness inside to scent the stale indoor air. I look to see the dawn’s light, is the sun about to rise? Often it appears as barely a hint of lightness behind the clouds. Not quite piercing through, suggesting the day’s beginning rather than proclaiming it. On such days, it feels an invitation to set the kettle to boil and grind my coffee beans. I approach such days, slowly. I take out the toaster and my sourdough loaf. Butter and peanut butter at the ready. Once my cup of coffee is wafting its fragrance around me, my toast coated to perfection, I sit in my favorite chair by the window, a small table at my side to rest my plate of toast and my coffee cup. Ah….now I can watch the comings and goings at the village store across the street. Trucks, plows, cars and tractors…spilling their occupants. I like watching how folks move. Some are elderly and bent forward, some are young and walk with a spring in their step. Yet, all are contracted against the cold. The store, a haven of warmth and food. Workers come out bearing their coffees, breakfast sandwiches and donuts. Fuel to start their workdays. Many will be out in the cold as they work on farms or ply their construction trade. The trick of setting the coffee cup on top of the car or balanced on their food packages while struggling to open their doors. There are conversations at the gas pump, handshakes and head nods but the cold promotes brevity of words. Return the gas nozzle and close the gas cap. Jump in their vehicles and they are off.

In the summer, many of the old men gather on the side porch to share their mornings with one another. Winter does not invite this ease. It is all business and a scurrying to return to the warmth of their vehicles.

If the sun is shining, I get dressed immediately and go out to walk in its path. The frost can turn grasses into shimmering ice sculptures that sway in the wind. I watch groups of tiny birds swirl in like a wide brushstroke, which disperses as each lands on a single blade of grass. They dip and bob as their weight is felt. They nibble at the seed heads as their balance is found. Then whoosh….as if a response to a bell ringing, they all take flight. A streak across the sky.

The ice can create patterns of beauty as well as treacherous tracks to walk upon. I love to walk but winter presents its challenges. To get down my short path to the driveway is not for the faint of heart. I have to have ice grippers on my boots. Even then, at times I slide. After breaking my wrist two winters ago, I am respectful of what the ice demands.

Yet, walking in the chilly air, with my eyes streaming into frozen tracks on my cheeks, I feel alive. I breathe in the clean air that seems to scour my lungs. My breath comes out in short gasps until I will my body to relax. My movement will bring warmth, I have a warm abode to return to, this air can enliven me for the day ahead. This is true whether the sky is overcast or it is sleeting rain or softly falling snow. I have to engage with the weather in order to make my way through the winter darkness.

Winter reminds me to take tender care of myself. Hot baths for my dried out, white white skin. My feet look foreign to me, enclosed in socks all day, they turn into funny looking things. My skin drinks the tallow cream my daughter makes, soaking it up like a sponge. Static fly away hair, chapped lips, the body feels heavier and seeks comfort. Cups of hot cocoa, cookies, warm soups., ..the hearth becomes the god of the house. I always longed to have one of the aga stoves that are spoken of in English novels, where the fire burns all day, sending out its warmth. I love the bone warming heat of a wood stove. I love to sit and watch its flames while my hands move with some crafting.

At present, I do not have a wood stove so have bought myself an electric one whose flames are not real but still satisfy some element in me. Candles help with their wavering lights casting shadows for me.

The dark days ask more of me than I often have. I want to slumber like a bear to awake when the light returns with longer days and shorter nights. It takes some digging in my soul to stir from my chair and brave the elements. Yet it is not the outer elements that take the most courage. I feel the darkness invite me in, with new spaces to explore on the inner planes. With the outer so quiet, the inner raises its head and calls to me. The shadowy depths have gifts, I know. How deep will I allow myself to go?

December is flying by, full of activities for Christmas and a baby to come. Baking, sewing, crafting, wrapping gifts, sending cards and parcels to keep the connection to those far away. January awaits, knowing that the noise will die down, the icicles will hold and the world will still in its frozen form. My inner being smiles……she knows that I will come. I will explore the darkness with my light. I will gather my strength to see how brightly I can shine. I will open the gifts that the dark of winter holds and find the glad tidings of my soul.

A poster created by a local The Bread and Puppet Theater that has been active since the 1960s, in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont.The name Bread & Puppet is derived from the theater’s practice of sharing its own fresh bread with the audience at each performance to create community. Its central principle is that art should be as basic as bread to life. Their print shop creates these beautiful posters.

This poster expresses what happens as we set our intention and attention on someone or something. This dandelion is literally singing its bright yellow joy into the world. All of nature, and that includes our human natures, responds to attention. Whether positive or negative attention, a response is elicited. We blossom in the glow of positive attention, as this dandelion does. Our hearts expand and we drink in words or actions that are directed our way. We know that children flourish under a diet of positive attention and wither under the weight of negative attention.

With attention being such a powerful thing, it behooves us to feel into our intentions behind our giving of attention. When we get up in the morning, what is our intention for our day? When we share something with someone, what is our intention? With this on my mind, I discovered that I had shared something recently without thinking of my intention in doing so. It was information about a mutual acquaintance and it was received in the vein of gossip. As I reviewed my day, it stood out in a glaring light. My intention was not clear. Had I stopped to feel what my intention was, before sharing, I would not have shared. Clarity about intention forces you to feel if and when to share some information.

My intention each morning, is to be uplifting to all whom I meet, to be a force of love in this world. Gossip does not uplift, does not ennoble. Neither does judgment of self or others. If I desire to uplift and be love, I need to have the intention to treat myself, as well as others, with love and care.

With this new focus heightened, I was amazed at the number of times that I acted or spoke without being clear as to my intention behind the words or action. This woke me up in a new way. My intention is to be conscious and clear all the time. It is difficult to do! I find myself slipping into unconsciousness much more frequently than I thought. With my attention now turned to my intentions, I get a quick jolt of a reminder when I am veering off my intended path of love.

For the most part, my intention is to be love and my attention follows as I focus on the beauty that abounds around me. This realization came home to me almost two decades ago when I took a trip to India after signing my divorce papers. The man who taught me a yoga meditation course, gave me a huge blessing. After our last meditation experience together where we traveled out into the cosmos, he looked at me and said, “You are a force of love in this world.”

Those words changed my life as they rang true in every cell of my body. All the shame and guilt that I had wrapped around me like a heavy cloak, woven of my decision to end my twenty-five year marriage, slipped off my shoulders in that moment. I had been loving. I had been loving!

I had tried a hundred different ways to assist my then husband out of his addictions until the most loving thing I could do, was to leave. Years later, he thanked me for having the courage to leave him. To force him choose a new path. To allow new growth.

There is so much of life waiting for our attention. Let us shower the trees, the birds, the children, our mother earth, one another and ourselves most of all, with an intention to be loving. As we give love our attention, it grows and fills more and more of our world. We are love. Love is the most powerful and expansive force on the planet. With it, we can light up this world and create heaven on earth.