The Wavering Flame.
Reflections on time, stillness, and dwindling attention as we approach the darkest days of the year.
This week, my partner and I had the honor of witnessing a collective seasonal ritual. After a weekend of participating in the annual jubilant gathering and festivities at our children’s school and with the wider community, all of the evergreen decorations used are gathered and arranged into a reverent Advent spiral. It is here we are held in the knowledge that Winter is more than a season of snow, presents, and jingle bells, it’s one of humanity’s oldest metaphors for presence, time, transition, and renewal. We are beckoned to walk toward the heart of light, surrendering to the darkness to rising around us, into the warmth of collective hope, a string of illuminated hearts, hand in hand.
“Vines, leaves, roots of darkness, growing
now you are uncurled and cover our eyes
with the edge of winter sky
leaning over us in icy stars.
Vines, leaves, roots of darkness, growing,
come with your seasons, your fullness, your
end.”
Annie Finch
Time is not just passing in a linear sense— it welcomes a deepening. Each Winter is an invitation to be less reliant on an outside source for fuel but a return to an inner light as source, within our selves and one another, and each return is new because we are new in each moment.
The shorter days naturally shift our attention inward. Many cultures associate Winter with introspection, stillness, and waiting. The children from grades one through eight greet the spiral each year from their current and changing perspectives. They wait their turn, patiently, to light a candle while the adults witness and attempt to hold a sacred, still, and solemn space.
It’s such a pleasure to watch, as each year passes, how their relationship to the spiral shifts— their pace, sense of calm, and their demeanor have changed as they navigate the awkward phases of growth spurts and move more fully into their forms and bodies. The spiral truly becomes, for each of them, an invitation inward. Their flames wavering after lighting. How delicate is your inner flame? How does the outside world infringe upon your capacity to hold light?
Each time I arrive at the space, the one-room schoolhouse that once held the entire school, I’m struck again by the frenzy and noise of our outside adult world. It is requested we put our phones on silent or asleep, but the pull to check the time, the messages, whatever I might be missing is so strong, the hypocrisy apparent between the self importance of our built world and the gentler one we are attempting to cultivate for our children. How challenging it can feel to offer an hour or more of our undivided time to these children and to stillness, as I grow antsy in my seat. Each year, if I’m honest, I notice how my attention span is dwindling with my increased of use and dependence on technology, how patience is hard to come by, and how my participation as witness steadies my nervous system into a less hurried rhythm.
Our children are growing like bean poles, and the longer I’ve occupied online spaces I find, out of privacy, I share my experiences in motherhood and my reflections less and less to protect them and honor their own lives. This event, however, carried me back into my early years of mothering— watching nervously as they navigated the spiral, fingers crossed they didn’t light anything on fire, I’ve watched their confidence and assuredness blossom over time. I wonder what it feels like for them to greet this ritual year after year, how it might anchor their being in place and time on the wheel of life, season after season.
Some children rush through the evergreens, stones, and shells spiral to light their candle, held firm by an apple in their hands, only to realize once lit that they must go at a slower pace as to not to extinguish their flame. I ponder how I can apply this reflection in my own life. How can we slow ourselves way down this time of year to nurture and protect our creative flame? It goes against the mainstream current. The built world seemingly hell bent on diminishing our hopes, creative potentiality, and sacred fire. How can we walk more tenderly throughout our days to kindle the trembling light within? This season signals a period of dormancy and gestation, not a time to push ahead.
Each year I try to take this lesson to heart, and each year it feels like time is flying by at increasingly rapid speeds. I wondered if our experience of time is more informed by our own perceptions and conditioning than the actuality seconds and minutes? Winter reliably returns every year; a cue that time is truly cyclical, not linear, as dominant culture would lead us to believe. Time is a repetition, a dance between decay and rebirth.
All I can say is to call ourselves inward— to turn toward what is nourishing, to lean into the darkness and stillness to stoke the light, is essential. It speaks to me of our human nature to hibernate this time of year, to honor rest, to find quietude, not to attend all the social gatherings or strive to be the most and do the most. As we approach the still point of the solstice, the center of the spiral, how can we, too, take our turn to exhale and release the burden of expectation and perfection, to accept ourselves just as we are, right where we are? Winter is full of latent possibility; while nature appears asleep, underneath the surface seeds are held in potential.
In the end, light will inevitably find it a way towards you.
How can we cultivate spacious quiet to nurture our dreams and visions for the future?
xx, in gratitude and camaraderie, Alyson.