I have found that spiritual, emotional, and physical healing can begin even in times that are darkened, cold, alone, silent … when I still my heart and contemplate the “treasures of darkness” (Isaiah 45:3). One of the sweetest treasures of darkness is the realization that we are not alone. This realization encouraged me anew this winter as I contemplated that nature also experiences the waiting that has become more acute for us during a pandemic winter.

In much of the Northern Hemisphere, at least, we have been waiting for lighter, warmer days of nature’s renewal. And during these days of Lent we also recall, again, Jesus’ crucified body waiting in a dark, cold cave of death. When Jesus “woke up” in that cave of a tomb, did he open his eyes to darkness? Or did his open eyes, his very breath and resurrection-life energy, shine light into the darkness even before the stone rolled away? John wrote that Jesus is the light and the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it (John 1:5).

We can experience moments during periods of waiting that are holy, even healing. One morning this past winter I sat in meditative prayer in a corner room of our basement. That room has two windows with below-ground-level window wells. During the summer, toads and tiger salamanders dwell in the window wells. My grandchildren like to look for them. During winter, these denizens of the deeps dig into the earth and wait in darkness, finally emerging again in late spring. On that cold, sequestered pandemic morning I was thinking about these creatures—and my own sense of waiting—when this poem came to me:

There is no heartbeat

in a seed

Yet life waits

in that brittle encasement

as surely as in the stilled

breathing and slowed

beating heart of

toads and salamanders

in winter deeps and

sleeping bears in caves

Waiting, waiting, we wait

in lengthened nights and

chilled soil and cloistered suns

for warmer, lighter, moister days

to dawn

From on high—and pulsing

in the depths—we hear

“Wait… Wait… Be still…”

and “Coming—

I did, I am, I will.”

~Catherine Lawton

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(This post was first published at GodSpace on 3-27-21.)

Photo: Ehud Neuhaus / Unsplash