A Retreat

Joey Carlson
MSMU Class of 2025

(2/2023) Christmas is positioned in the middle of winter because that is when there is the least light and the world is the least hospitable to life. The allegory of winter seems intimately tied to hope; hope for spring, hope for Christ, etc. Yet God also created winter good and beautiful as it is. Winter certainly exists to be desolate, so that from that desolation we may pray with the prophet, "Even though the fig trees have no blossoms, and there are no grapes on the vines; even though the olive crop fails, and the fields lie empty and barren; yet I will rejoice in the Lord!" (Habakkuk 3:17-19) While it is true that winter is meant to be desolate, we also know that God does not subscribe to an "ends justify the means" philosophy. Therefore, winter must be gorgeous and useful on its own.

I love winter. I feel most myself in winter, not just when it’s snowing or when I’m celebrating the holidays, but when I’m walking around campus at 11:00pm and it’s 15 degrees, or when I’m sitting in my car waiting for the heat to turn on, or when the sun rises red after I’ve already been up for a few hours. It is difficult to describe. I feel freer in my winter coat from the National Soldier Factory in Gettysburg, a wool Swedish Tunic from 1947. I feel capable, as if I’m in some kind of epic, and I have an important role to play.

For all of human history, every day has been a struggle. It remains a struggle, but today it is no longer directly against the dirt and the elements, but rather against feelings of uselessness and complacency. In my mind, though both struggles truly have equal dignity, the former is easier to understand than the latter. I imagine what would happen if I were to tell one of my forefathers that I was struggling to complete one of my tasks, that I was struggling to think of and write an essay in my heated bedroom in February. What would he say? Perhaps he’d think me far more fortunate than him, since I was shielded from the wind and the rain, and since I get to do something I supposedly enjoy. Perhaps he’d pity me and the fact that I’ve lost my powers: I’ve traded in the capacity to walk 30 miles a day for a pair of fuzzy slippers. These sorts of thoughts have often made me feel insignificant, though empowered sometimes as well. Understand that I am not saying precisely that our condition in slippers is exactly pitiable, I only mean that it seems that we are falling short of something. When it is hard to walk outside because of the biting chill, I remember my human condition, and how there is worth to suffering, and much less worth to complacency.

If all things were easy to us, a number of things would happen. First, we would have less opportunity to be human, since what makes humans special is their ability to choose, even in circumstances when every other inclination points them to choose something else. Second, we would eventually just meet a new equilibrium, only at a lower capacity for enduring suffering than before. Everything would feel mundane as it once did, before it became easy.

Of course, by necessity, we must spend more time inside during the winter than during the summer. Vitamin D’s important, but during the winter there is just less of it to be had. The extended periods of being inside and the increased solitude because my friends are feeling the same things that I am feeling both prompt a desire to work and to think. Most studies have shown that people are more productive in the winter, even prompting theories about the economic capabilities of nations close to the equator vs nations with four seasons. I love desiring to work; similar to before, it makes me feel like I’m having a real impact, and I feel like the person I want to be. I have a kind of vision of the working man inherited from my father, and while there are flaws, I love the idea of me spending my hours doing good things for the glory of God.

One of my great loves is music, and during the winter, I typically take out my Russian classical music CDs, as the Russians seem to understand what cold is. Russian history is intimately tied with immense suffering (especially because of the cold), and it has granted much of its art and music a deeply personal element. Rachmaninoff is my favorite of the Russian composers, and in case anyone wants to get into classical music or believes that they do not like classical music but are open minded, I would recommend listening to his second piano concerto. He manages to make me nostalgic for a time and place that I have never experienced, though after hearing his second concerto so many times, I am filled with memories. I find I get tired sooner now than before, and my roommates and I have made a habit of listening to some of my favorite classical music before we go to sleep.

In my best case scenario, the rest of winter will manage to be a sort of retreat in order to develop some discipline and strengthen my interior life so that I can come back to the exterior world a better man. Social life, too, manages to have some special capacity to nourish the soul when the world outside is cold.

Far too many of our discomforts come from not feeling ourselves. For many, winter doesn’t help, because the world outside doesn’t accept you on a very material level. I would assert, however, that winter does provide an opportunity to reimagine oneself. To go into nature and to not be served by it is not to assert your independence from nature, but rather to assert your rightful position in nature. That is, to flourish in difficult circumstances: it is a self-vision we would all like to have.

Read other articles by Joe Carlson