Winter Benediction

Malcolm Guite, friend and inspiration for Cultivating, offers us our winter benediction and thus has blessed our year. Along with his own benedictions for the season, Malcolm has also shared the fitting words from Samuel Taylor Coleridge as the overarching covering for all we hope to tend and nurture here at Cultivating.

Through all seasons we find the presence of God and see evidence of His goodness.

Let us be glad and rejoice in it!

IV Winter

When winter comes and winds are cold and keen,

When nights are darkest, though the stars shine bright,

When life shrinks to its roots, or sleeps unseen,

Then may he bless and bring you to his light.

For he has come at last, and can be seen,

God’s love, made vulnerable, tightly curled:

The Winter Child, The Saviour Of The World.

from Frost at Midnight

Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet Moon

Samuel Taylor Coleridge,

May we each find hope in the season of winter and waiting, and may we cultivate it with courage.

As Winter passes Spring surely approaches, even when we cannot see it.

Let us us abide in this season bravely and with good cheer, sure of the renewal that is coming!

Many blessings to you, friends, and every grace be yours!

*The featured image is courtesy of Lancia E. Smith and used with her glad permission for Cultivating.

Malcolm Guite

Poet, priest, academic, and Life Fellow of Girton College Cambridge,  Dr Rev’d Malcolm Guite travels extensively throughout Great Britain and North America, to give lectures, concerts and poetry readings. He is the author of more than a dozen books, and hosts the marvelous YouTube channel, A Spell in the Library.

malcolmguite.wordpress.com/