Snow Days

As a public school teacher in a southern state, I look forward to snow days with almost as much excitement and glee as my students. Snow doesn't come to us all that often, and when it does, the world slows down or comes to a complete halt. If roads are treacherous at all, schools will surely be closed. It is like the universe has given us a special holiday. Now, while the kids all want to go outside to build snowmen and go sledding, I find snow days a wonderful time to get some quality "inside" time. I mean that both literally and figuratively.

Winter, itself, is a time when the cycle of nature in climates not too close to the equator seems to indicate more indoor time. The weather and shorter days in more agrarian societies of times past sent people indoors to different tasks than those of the other seasons. At a metaphorical level, winter is a time of the seed lying in darkness in the earth awaiting the sun energy to warm it enough to cause it to sprout. And for us in our individuation process, metaphorically, it may be a time of going in, away from the outer world, to become aware of the seeds within which have the potential to burst forth into new life. Becoming aware of those seeds may be the very sun needed to warm them. As we nurture them with consciousness, they may be able to sink roots into the soil and then shoot sprouts out into the world as the seasons change.

Snow days for me then are days when the outer world loosens its grip on me enough that I can just be... let the inner musings of my mind explore what "seeds" might lie in my inner depths, what ground may need preparing for spring growth. In her book, Goddesses in Older Women, Jungian analyst Jean Bolen says, "Archetypes are like seeds that are in all of us from the beginning." There is potential in the archetype. Bolen goes on, "Depending upon circumstance and predisposition, some become activated and others remain dormant." Some may have been present all along without our recognizing them. (p. 203)

In a metaphorical sense, preparing the ground for the seed is anything we do which might create an opportunity for the archetype to bring us more awareness of who we really are. Our potential may lie hidden in the shadows of our individual root cellars, and unless we go inside and down into the depths, we may never realize what we have or fully who we are.

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