We live in a culture that often wants to remain in the proverbial summer of life – a time where things are happy and warm, where life is faced with ease and fulfillment. However, anyone who has lived a little while in this world knows that this is not how life works. Using Katherine May’s book Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, we will explore the truth about the cyclical pattern of life that leaves us returning time and again both to a literal and a figurative winter. Together we will consider the power of rest and retreat, the liminal space of this season, and the opportunities for transformation and wisdom. By looking to Scripture, considering nature, and learning from Katherine May’s own journey, we will learn to embrace the gifts of our own winters in new and meaningful ways.
“Wintering is a season in the cold. It is a fallow period in life when you’re cut off from the world, feeling rejected, sidelined, blocked from progress, or cast into the role of an outsider. However it arrives, wintering is usually involuntary, lonely, and deeply painful. Yet it’s also inevitable. We like to imagine that it’s possible for life to be one eternal summer and that we have uniquely failed to achieve that for ourselves…but life’s not like that.”
– from Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times – Katherine May
11.10 | Rest & Retreat
Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8, Mark 6:30-32
11.17 | Liminal Space
Genesis 39:21-23, Deuteronomy 8:1-9
11.24 | Transformation
Luke 5:1-11, Romans 12:1-2
