Inspiring thoughts from Meditation at Monona Terrace

March 6, 2025

WINTERING THROUGH by Parker Palmer

I’ve spent most of my life living in places where the winters can be brutal. (Here in Wisconsin, as I write, it’s 9 °F.) So for most of my adult life, I’ve been reflecting on what it takes to “winter through.” That question has become more urgent for me as I/we try to find our way thru winters of many sorts—including the deep freeze descending on our democracy, the suffering here at home and around the world and, for some of us, the challenges of old age. That’s why I keep this 12″x15″ black scratchboard painting (shown here only in part) on the wall next to my writing desk. I bought it eight years ago on one of my visits to the Taos Pueblo in New Mexico, a “thin place” where I can feel the connection of the visible and the invisible worlds. The Pueblo—whose first structures were built c. 1000 AD—is believed to be the oldest continuously inhabited community in the U.S. So the people who call this place home have had to persevere through all kinds of winters, literal and metaphorical, as they have done for a millennium and more. I’m not looking to them for “tips, tricks, and techniques” for wintering through. It’s enough for me to know that these Tiwa-speaking brothers and sisters, with deep roots in their indigenous religion, have done exactly that, against greater odds than I will ever face. My work is to find my own deep roots in the ground of my own life—roots that can survive the winter, keep heart, mind and soul alive, then emerge and thrive in the form of new life when spring comes. As it always does and always will… How do you “winter through?”