Hi, dear friends. This newsletter almost didn’t make it to your inboxes this week. I’ve felt my mind pulled in several directions recently and was grappling with skipping a week of writing when I felt an internal pressure to “prove” my consistency in this space. I talked to a friend about it and she gave me permission to let that pressure go. Said, “Let yourself have a fallow week and see how you’re feeling the next week.” 

I’ve always loved the concept of fallowness - to leave land unplanted so that it can regenerate. A time for slow, hidden work beneath the surface. A time of non-productivity that nevertheless preserves potential. In my hemisphere, we are beginning to winter. To lie a little more dormant. Even as I cultivate a Season of Light this winter, I am also aware of my need to nest and rest as part of my continued growth. These concepts do not feel in opposition to me, but rather as a balanced part of the whole self I want to move through these winter months. 

I’ve also always loved the concepts of Sabbaths and sabbaticals. I think about the rest associated with these practices as rigorous rest. By that I mean, rest as integral to future flourishing. Rest as discipline. 

Taken together, I’m tempted to write an ode to fallowness. A poem in praise of rest. Last week, I mentioned darkness as fertile ground where all forms are latent. So, too, is the fallow soil of my winter mind. Creation is hope, yes, and also dormancy is a necessary step before creations can be sown and hope can be reaped.

One of my very favorite poems by Mary Oliver is In Blackwater Woods. I think about its final lines almost daily. Think, too, about the cycling it speaks to - the death and rebirth. As well as the notion of the unknowability of its meaning. Here’s the poem:

This week, I’m taking Mary’s words to heart as well as a reminder from Katherine May’s book Wintering in which she says, “We have seasons when we flourish and seasons when the leaves fall from us, revealing our bare bones. Given time, they grow again.” This season, I want to not fight so hard against the leaves falling from me. I want to let these months reveal my bare bones and then find a light inside myself burning still. I want to tend. I want to participate actively in my rest so that, given time, I may flourish again. And I desperately want to love what is mortal, hold it against those very bare bones, and then to release my hold. I want to let it go. 

I would love to hear how this resonates with you. If you’re in a period where you feel things are dormant - maybe more dormant than you’d like - perhaps there’s room for a reframe. Perhaps you are simply storing moisture and memory for the next sowing and reaping. Perhaps there is hope to be found, even here. If you are in a season where you are gripping tightly to what is mortal, perhaps there is room to loosen. To rest your weary muscles. To lean into the black river of loss whose other side is salvation. Perhaps perhaps perhaps. Thank you for being here with me in the darkness and the light, in the fallowness and the flourishing, in the now.