by Steve Matthews, Senior Missional Consultant
It’s December 3, 2025, and the landscape of our yard has changed quickly and dramatically in the past month. In early November a few cosmos were still blooming, there was still some green hanging on to the stems and limbs of the trees, the ferns were still on the front porch. This morning there is a dusting of snow, and the colors in our yard can best be described as “variations of brown and gray.” Everything looks dead.
But is it dead, or is it just dormant? The word “dormant” comes from the Latin word “dormire” which means to sleep. I wouldn’t say that the yard is dead but asleep…maybe? I’m not so sure about that either. After all, the birds are still picking out seeds from the cosmo spires, the asters, and the sunflowers, and some of the seeds from the plants in the meadow have fallen to the ground. This winter, they will experience stratification – the process by which many seeds freeze in the soil. Stratification is a natural process, and it is only by freezing that these seeds will germinate in the spring. The dogwood in the picture above is already setting buds for April blooms.
While the darkness of night continues to encroach on the daylight, the energy of life continues to emanate across the landscape, it just takes more energy and attention to notice it. Life is still happening. While life processes appear to have slowed down, new life is shoring up its resources for the days to come… albeit in a more hidden way.
I wonder what the Spirit is doing in our midst right now. What of life and life’s possibility aren’t we noticing, naming, or nurturing? How is germination disguised as dormancy? I wonder what would happen if we were to hover over our faith communities and neighborhoods with a more curious eye. Just for kicks, imagine yourself as a drone (a silent one, PLEASE) observing your communities with an intention of holy awareness.
Pulitzer Prize winning author Annie Dillard links awareness to a state of present, unselfconscious presence, seeing the world with “first vision” before the mind imposes meaning. She argues that we are here to “witness the creation and to abet it” by noticing and paying attention to the world around us and the people in it, including both its beauty and its power. For Dillard, cultivated awareness involves finding stillness, going calm, and dissolving the self into the totality of existence.
I think this sounds like a good winter-solsticy-kind-of practice to me. Care to join the FaithX team this December in slowing down, looking longer and more deeply at our communities, suspending judgement, and enhancing our curiosity? Where is life quietly emerging? What needs to be noticed, named, and nurtured right here, right now?
We would love to know what you are noticing. Please join the conversation under this post on our Facebook page.
