Wintering Quotes

“Als je lesgeeft kun je niet ongelukkig of met tegenzin het lokaal binnenlopen. Je moet je eigen energie opofferen aan die van je studenten, je persoonlijke tegenzin op de brandstapel gooien van hun gebrek aan belangstellling. Je moet het zonder de ouderwetse, luxueuze pedagogische overtuiging stellen dat de mensen die je lesgeeft lui, onopgevoed of bevoorrecht zijn. Je doet het juist in de wetenschap dat ze allemaal zuchten onder de zware last van hun eigen zorgen, hun eigen anst, hun eigen werkdruk en beslommeringen. Je loopt je klaslokaal in en probeert deze grote groep mensen net genoeg te vermaken dat ze iets leren dat hen zal helpen hun ellende in de toekomst te verzachten.”
― Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

“We richten onze genegenheid op de meest hulpeloze burgers denkbaar- baby's en kinderen - om redenen die niets te maken hebben met hun toekomstig nut. We bloeien op bij zorgzaamheid, bij het uitdelen van liefde. De meest hulpeloze leden van onze families en gemeenschappen houden ons bij elkaar.”
― Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

“(...) Boven alles zinspeels Halloween op de winter die eraan komt, opent het de deur naar het donkere seizoen en herinnert het ons aan de duisternis die in ieders toekomst op de loer ligt.”
― Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

“Spoken en geesten mogen dan onderdeel zijn van de gruwelen van Halloween, onze liefde voor verhalen over geesten verraadt een veel kwetsbaarder verlangen: dat we niet zo gemakkelijk uit dit aardse leven verdwijnen. (...) Verborgen onder onze grootspraak laten verhalen over geesten een andere bezorgdheid zien: we hopen dat de doden ons niet vergeten. We hopen dat wij, de levenden, het geloof in de zin van het leven, dat lijkt te verdampen als onze geliefden sterven, niet zullen verliezen.”
― Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

“Dat is wat mensen doen: we scheppen en herscheppen onze geschiedenis, laten de verhalen die niet meer geschikt zijn achterwege en proberen nieuwe verhalen uit.”
― Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

“(...) Stress is ook iets beschamends, een verklaring dat ik niet tegen druk bestand ben.
Stiekem ben ik blij dat ik met een fysieke pijn worstel, liever dan het vage gevoel van verpletterd zijn. Op een of andere manier voelt het concreter. Ik kan me erachter verschuilen en zeggen: 'zie je wel, het is niet zo dat ik mijn werk niet aankan. Ik ben echt ziek.”
― Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

“The problem with “everything” is that it ends up looking an awful lot like nothing:”
― Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

“Some ideas are too big to take in once, and completely.”
― Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

“This isn’t about you getting fixed,’ he said, ‘this is about you living the best life you can with the parameters that you have.”
― Katherine May, Wintering: How I learned to flourish when life became frozen

“It often seems easier to stay in winter, burrowed down into our hibernation nests, away from the glare of the sun. But we are brave, and the new world awaits us, gleaming and green, alive with the beat of wings. And besides, we have a kind of gospel to tell now, and a duty to share it. We, who have wintered, have learned some things. We sing it out like birds. We let our voices fill the air.”
― Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

“Women’s voices are contested in a way that men’s never are. If we speak too softly, we are treated as gentle mice; if we raise our voices to be heard, we are shrill.”
― Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

“tetchy”
― Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

“Schimbarea nu va inceta sa aiba loc. Singurul lucru pe care-l putem controla este reactia noastra.”
― Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

“Fericirea este potențialul nostru, produsul unei minți căreia i se permite să gândească așa cum are nevoie să o facă, care are suficient din ce este necesar, care nu e afectată de greutatea cumplită a bullying-ului. Când suntem copii, tolerăm condiții de muncă pe care le-am considera inacceptabile ca adulți: expunerea constantă a realizărilor noastre în fața unei audiențe ostile; motivația prin amenințare în loc de încurajare; lumea socială în care se face mișto de tine și ești sâcâit, în care cele mai jenante dorințe ale tale sunt expuse, în care corpul tău nou format este expus unui gen de examinare care ar distruge un adult. Adesea, în timpul copilăriei, asta vine la pachet și cu amenințări fizice - să fii împins și tras la locul de joacă, lovit cu pumnii sau picioarele. Eterna amenințare că ceva și mai sălbatic te așteaptă după colț pe drumul spre casă. Imaginați-vă cum ați percepe asta ca adulți: acea amenințare permanentă la adresa integrității corpului tău și a sănătății tale mintale. Nu am accepta niciodată așa ceva, dar am acceptat asta când eram copii pentru că asta se aștepta de la noi și nu aveam altă variantă.”
― Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

“Sunt convinsa ca frigul are puteri tamaduitoare pe care inca nu reusesc sa le inteleg. Pana la urma, punem gheata pe o articulatie dupa o cadere stangace. De ce nu facem la fel cu viata?”
― Katherine May, Iernile Sufletului

“That’s what the natural world does—it carries on surviving. Sometimes it flourishes, lays on fat, garlands itself in leaves, makes abundant honey; and sometimes it pares back to the very basics of existence in order to keep living.”
― Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

“He was the first person to ever say that, and the effect was profound.”
― Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

“By embracing winter, rather than trying to push it away, we have both found a way to keep going.”
― Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

“My own midnight terrors vanish when I turn insomnia into a watch: a claimed sacred space in which I have nothing to do but contemplate. Here, I am offered a place in between, like finding a hidden door, the stuff of dreams. Even dormice know how to do it: they wake a while and tend to business before surrendering back to sleep. Over and again, we find that winter offers us liminal spaces to inhabit. Yet still we refuse them. The work of”
― Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

“A. Roger Ekirch asserts that before the Industrial Revolution, it was normal to divide the night into two periods of sleep: the “first sleep,” or “dead sleep,” lasting from the evening until the early hours of the morning; and the “second” or “morning” sleep, which took the slumberer safely to daybreak. In between, there was an hour or more of wakefulness known as the “watch,” in which “Families rose to urinate, smoke tobacco, and even visit close neighbors.”
― Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

“It always happens at three a.m.: a long way past late, but too early to surrender and start the day. There, in the truest night, I lie in the dark and catastrophise.”
― Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

“But in recent weeks, my happy hibernation has been disrupted. I’ve come to call it the “terrible threes”: the dark insomniac hours when my mind declares itself, fully fired, in the middle of the night.”
― Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

“Winter”
― Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

“spend three days eating egg fried rice and spaghetti with butter, white toast and Marmite and bacon sandwiches. It’s the most counterintuitive diet I’ve ever followed, and it fills me with guilt and also makes me feel better than I have in months. The effect is almost instant: the bizarre sensation that I can straighten up again, that I can actually digest what I eat, that my energy has returned.”
― Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

“The orderly universe of the hospital helps us to form our own abscission zone, that hardening off of an old life, ready to shed its duties and expectations.”
― Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

“ground. Life goes on abundantly in winter—changes made here will usher us into future glories.”
― Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

“It is far from dead.”
― Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

“we’re seeing the skeleton of the tree, a dead thing until the sun returns. But look closely, and every single tree is in bud, from the sharp talons of the beech to the hooflike black buds of the ash. Many trees also display catkins in the winter, like the acid-green lambs’ tails of the hazel and the furry grey nubs of the willow. These employ the wind or insects to spread pollen, ready for the new year.”
― Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

“zone. Gradually it severs the leaf from access to water, and the leaf dries and browns and in most cases falls off, either under its own weight or encouraged by wintery rains and winds. Within a few hours, the tree will have released substances to heal the scar the leaf has left, protecting itself from the evaporation of water, infection, or the invasion of parasites. Even as the leaves are falling, the buds of next year’s crop are already in place, waiting to erupt again in spring. Most trees produce their buds in high summer, and the autumn leaf fall reveals them, neat and expectant, protected from the cold by thick scales. We rarely notice them because we think”
― Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

“The dropping of leaves by deciduous trees is called abscission. It occurs on the cusp between autumn and winter, as part of an arc of growth, maturity, and”
― Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times