An important internal journey is reflected all around us in nature each winter. Here in the Hudson Valley and Northeast, the trees may seem nearly lifeless, the landscape sullen, but within all that, quiet and important movements are indeed happening. Those majestic branched beings have dropped their green canopy, blooms and fruit have long withered, yet as they stand naked in their seemingly ancient skin, they have merely stripped down to the essential. What if, as the journey turns inward, they are embracing the gifts of stillness and internal creativity that will help bolt the spring into wild cacophony and color?

In fact, the bursting birth of spring simply cannot happen without this essential, individual gestation in these darker days. Much of the wisdom winter offers is about returning to silence and one’s solitary experience, and too, the deepest, truest part of ourselves so that we can be born (to create and experience life) anew if we use our time right. The potential for this human rebirth has to do similarly with celebrating the opportunity for internal alignment and balance, and maybe even finding comfort in stillness.

Francis Weller, in The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief wisely explains, “Silence is a practice of emptying, of letting go. It is a process of hollowing ourselves out so we can open to what is emerging. Our work is to make ourselves receptive. The organ of receiving is the human heart, and it is here that we feel the deep ache of loss, the bittersweet reminders of all that we loved, the piercing artifacts of betrayal, and the sheer truth of impermanence. Love and loss, as we know so well, forever entwined.”

To understand and invite these cold and often lonely months is to appreciate that, like children as they sleep, we too grow most in and through the dark. Embracing this notion is antithetical to our “just be happy” mythologizing of reality. And it is hard, maybe even excruciating for Americans to be still, to be quiet. We seem to be defined by our activities and productivity, and we are comfortable measuring ourselves and others by those values. Are we enough? Have we done enough? We look for evidence of our impact through monetary reward, through our “social” worth, and perhaps most of all through our “busyness” which usually has more to do with frenzied action than a return to ourselves. But what happens when much of this, like autumn’s leaves, has fallen away? This is what many have been wrestling with this past year, laid bare by joblessness, less disposable income, and seclusion.

People speak often of seasonal depression, but how much of that is being forced to sit with ourselves without distraction or perpetual motion, to explore and mend our own unresolved grief and longings? Winter, like Covid, offers us an opportunity (yes, opportunity) to plunge into all that, to release or transform it, and what no longer serves us. Winter, like Covid, gifts us time to dream and re-member.

Contending with quarantine, masks, pervasive isolation, and a disconnect from things that previously “defined” us or we derived meaning from, has left many feeling as if this year of Covid has been like a prolonged, interminable winter.

Who are we really, whatever season?

Can we become content doing less?

Is there a “value” in stillness?

These questions and the quest for inner fulfillment remind me of a passage in the book Mary Magdalene Revealed by Meggan Watterson: “Salvation [is] not something that’s one day given, or earned by a force outside of me. Salvation is waking up, becoming even more alive. More present. It’s revolutionary for me because I see how often it’s missed. If we are waiting for an external source of salvation, we’re forced outward. Instead, salvation comes from within. And we achieve this by going inward and participating in a process of remembering the love that’s all along just waiting for us to return to it.” This “love” and “salvation” of which she writes are all about coming into full presence. Incredibly, like Dorothy’s ruby slippers, our portal to find our way home (to our truest selves) is also with us all the time, accessed most readily through creativity and nature, two things that are the most important in Circle Creative Collective’s toolbox.

The Truth is Stillness is Never Still…

There’s always plenty happening, even when we’re mostly in our homes. But we humans can be harsh judges. We ask, am I enough? Am I doing enough? And with much of what we usually did before now stripped away, it can sometimes feel like we’re not. That’s where the power of craft and creativity come in-- to bust through and transform a sense of overwhelm, disconnection, and lack of meaning.

The simple alchemy of hand-work can help bring light to dark days; it offers a balm to isolation. It makes us realize that our very existence matters, our hands as portals to our soul’s longings. Of all the stories we have heard of people struggling during the last challenging 10 months, those we spoke to who honored a creative process and release, and spent time in and with nature simply managed better. Creativity, craft, and connecting to our natural world, like self-care, must be recognized not as indulgences but essential tools to feeling grounded, to being able to cope in what often feels like a lot of uncertainty, isolation, and even fear. These tools help us to be able to know ourselves better and feel more content.

You are cordially invited to join us on the creative path because, yes, creativity and craft are superpowers.

We hope you will experience this for yourself. When you can’t walk in the woods or grow things in a garden due to weather or other reasons (and also when you can), try keeping a basket of yarn, paints, a journal, a loom, and whatever else piques your interest on hand, even if you’ve never tried these things before or deemed them important. Then, when you’re having a moment of feeling lost, bored, or alone, please try taking out some of those “mere” materials as quickly as you can. Without judgement or qualifying what you are doing with wasted notions of “good” or “bad,” explore as you once did as a child.

Soon, simple things like color, wool, string, or blank paper, will remind you again to just BE, to PLAY, big important words that will bring you into full presence. They will help you forget those worries and what-ifs, and restore your faith in this beautiful moment. And this one…while you breathe a little deeper, and time will seem to stretch like the clay in your curious hands.

Perhaps you will also consider creating with others through our upcoming Zoom classes and Covid-safe workshops. One of Circle Creative Collective’s goals is to help one another find a way back to what matters most. As we step into the colder months ahead and enter deeper into home hibernation mode, Circle will offer the community a virtual series of workshops with kits that will explore a plethora of craft skills from the comfort of home. These will serve to (re)connect individuals to an open hearted community, and to the inherent wisdom that lives within each of our own hands.

Our Circle was formed because our founders recognized the healing power of creativity and the wisdom of tradition. As mothers, makers and creatives who all held a deep connection to Nature, we carried a separate, unique and very important seed for this nurturing, blooming garden of craft and community. Our team works together bringing skills, gifts, curiosity, and a raging pursuit for honesty and authenticity. We remind others of the importance of creating with a reverence for the earth, and an awareness about our collective impact on communities and individuals near and far. We encourage upcycling. We ignite a passion for processes; about the connection such traditions hold to the past and the healing powers of creativity. We invite open hearted play, conversation, and exploration. We laugh our heads off, and we sometimes weep as we share space, stories, listen to one another and create.

Again, to quote Meggan Watterson, “When I sit in a circle, I know my body will communicate more than anything I end up saying. It says, wordlessly, just by being at eye level with everyone else: There is no hierarchy to the spiritual world. There’s just this circle where the first becomes the last, and the last becomes the first. We are all equal. And we’re all equally trying, in our own crazy ways, to love ourselves enough to see the good that’s right here with us.”

As in every sacred circle, we invite you to come with your unique and positive intention(s).

We hope you’ll join us soon.

With love,

Jenny (and Circle)

In Defense of Stillness…

Travels, stays, (mostly stays these days) explorations of the heart and life.