THE MAP > A WINTERS TALE : CHAPTER ONE
A WINTER TALE
Chapter One: Glow
Prologue
In Shakespeare’s play The Winter’s Tale, at the beginning of Act 4 Time is personified and the audience learn that 16 years have suddenly passed. This expansion of time with no explanation reminds me of how this last year has been: so much has happened in such a short space of time. We have all experienced a version of the same story yet we have not been able to retell these as we have been confined to our homes, a contracted circle, often confused, alone, bereft, upended.
These coming winter months seem to be promising more of the same and so this is a call for us to find a way to retell our stories. In the same way that Jeannette Winterson retells The Winter’s Tale in The Gap of Time (which you may choose to seek out and read over these next few months) we can also create our own version of A Winter’s Tale.
How are we going to define what has happened to us and how can we retell that to the world in this present time in which we are speeded up yet slowed down all at once? Perhaps we are in our own gap of time as we wait in hope that what comes next will not upend us again. When we get to the end of this tale – will we be transported into a new life? Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves…
December
In December, the first month of our Winter’s Tale, we are entering ever increasing darkness but we ask you to notice that light is all around. There is a definite glow – the lights, the candles, the fires, and somewhere in your world: a torchbearer - igniting your reserve which can be framed as hope, brightening your sadness as you accept feelings of joy, illuminating your beliefs as you give way to faith, and lightening your load as you settle in peace.
Time and the bell have buried the day,
the black cloud carries the sun away.
Will the sunflower turn to us, will the clematis
Stray down, bend to us; tendril and spray
Clutch and cling?
Chill
Fingers of yew be curled
Down on us? After the kingfisher’s wing
Has answered light to light, and is silent, the light is still
At the still point of the turning world
T.S. Elliot
A time of year for telling stories as we reimagine the stories told to us.
What were your family traditions at this time of year? Did they bring you Joy?
Were you made to wait in hope for what it was you thought you wanted?
Was your story being told in a context that was alien to you?
Could you hold on to faith and be patient?
Were you able to find Peace?
I wonder have you transformed these stories? Or are you simply trying to reproduce them?
Neither way is preferable as both illuminate a path to something. Which way do you choose?
However you got to here, to today, know that this year could just have easily been 16 years passing in the blink of an eye. In The Winter’s Tale, time is invented. And perhaps it is here too.
Time is a concept created to enable us to imagine the boundlessness of space. So let us imagine that: if we are boundless, how far can we spread our stories?
The ripple effect is the result of the pitching of pebbles, the skimming of stones. Each circle may get bigger and further away from the centre, but it is the initial indentation that creates the shape.
So, as you reflect on your reimagining of the stories you are told and retell, to your friends, your family, and they in turn to their friends and family – what is the shape that you are creating? We are encouraged to be in the now but it is impossible to ignore that there is a future and these stones are laying the foundation for that.
The Ritual
We invite you this month to join us in a weekly ritual, lighting a new candle every Sunday for four weeks and taking a moment to sit and be as part of The Collective Energies community.
This originates from the Advent tradition but need not come from a place of any religion in particular. Quite the opposite. This is a reimagining of a story which invites us all, whatever our beliefs or experiences, to participate and create A Winter’s Tale.
The lighting of each candle represents a theme: Hope, Joy, Faith and Peace. You are asked each week to think about what these ideas mean to you. As we share time and space each Sunday there will be readings and music and the glow of the flame has purpose in lighting our way to the shortest day of the year.
During the space in-between, you are invited to hold these themes with you so that you may be reminded when something speaks to you on these words. Share in the Circle if you can, or with friends, family, or perhaps (safely) with a stranger – someone who might benefit from a story within these themes. These stories could be in the form of music, images, places, books, poems, documentaries, ideas or even action. Anything you feel compelled to do.
And as we light each candle at the end of the week:
“the collective field glows infinitely brighter and vaster.
In this way we each one of us hold the complexities of this time. The collective is able to live and breathe in a greater practice of spirit and care”
Naomi Absalom
The final candle is lit this year on the 19th of December just after the Cold Moon, just before the Winter Solstice.
With the Cold Moon drawing us towards the shortest day everything may appear to be still and lifeless, but we know deep down there is life: resting, recharging, renewing.
So we call upon our reserve in the cold, we celebrate in joy at this time of festivity, we have faith the solstice will come because this story is as old as time itself and, finally…. we glow bright in peace.
Winter Solstice is the ultimate time of renewal. There is no better time to stop and bravely immerse ourselves in the cycles of nature: of death and rebirth, of darkness and light. It’s a time to think about change and transformation, letting the long cold dark strip us down to the raw bones.
Naomi Absalom
And it is this final thought that we will carry with us into January and chapter two of our Winter’s Tale: Birth
Hannah Wallace
I am a teacher at heart, but what that really means is that I am always a learner. I engage in this community because it is full of people open to ideas, people prepared to share their thoughts and beliefs, people who believe in the energy of shared community spaces. I am here to speak, I am here to learn, I am here to be.
READ
The Gap of Time - The Winters Tale Retold by Jeannette Winterson
LISTEN
“How do you care about a future that you can’t imagine?”
A question taken from the Lights Out documentary: Deep Time and the Sparrowhawk.
A dive into the depths of time and how that might be extended beyond our ordinary considerations explored with those “who seek both to ask and answer questions about our bounded place in that which is boundless”. I encourage you to take some time to listen to this and consider that “perhaps, if we can better inhabit an expanded view of time, we might also expand how we can live its mysteries and exigencies”. Know that the things we feel and do are the stories we tell and retell. And as these stories all inhabit the same time and space, within that we are all connected.
MOVE
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Daily Meds: Stillness In Motion
A slow and steady breath based vinyasa practice to move back into stillness. Based on a variety of sun and moon salutations.
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Heart Cave: Into The Cave
A guided meditation for sitting with the intense feelings of discomfort and uncertainty. Descend into the cave and get practiced at acknowledging what is there in order to build acceptance.
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Orbit: The Root Of Grief
Dedicated to the wisdom of grief. In this session we explore the everydayness of grief and work at the root of the emotion through movement, sound and glorious dance.
