The Longest Night, The Deepest Dark

So often I hear rain and snow referred to as "bad" weather. I suppose if you're of the opinion that all of nature functions for your own pleasure and convenience, then, sure, that makes sense. I look at things from a different perspective. It's unreasonable and unrealistic to expect that the weather will always cooperate with your own personal schedule, or that if you live in Nebraska, that it will never rain or snow. It's neither good nor bad, it just is. To me, the cold of winter, with its ice and snow reminds me of the cycle of birth, life, death and resurrection that all things are part of. Just as a new life begins unformed in the dark of the womb, or the egg, or the soil, so the year begins in the dark of the season where the days get steadily shorter and the nights, the darks, steadily longer. The night of the winter solstice is sometimes celebrated as the beginning of the long procession of increasedly longer days; I observe it as the time of the longest night, the heart of the dark, the genesis of the underworld whence springs the unfolding year, the source of intuition and emotion, the wellspring of all that is wild & free: the deepest dark of our selves.

We need both the light and the dark, the heat and the cold to complete the cycle of birth, life, death & resurrection.