What if our winter is not wintery?

Toasty though it may be for those of you in the northern hemisphere, right now, the months of June, July and August are technically ‘winter’, down here in Australia. Winters in Sydney, where I live now, though, are nothing like winters in Montreal and Toronto, where I grew up, or even Philadelphia, where I spent my early adulthood. Those winters – ‘real’ winters! – were quite cold and, if we were lucky (unlucky?), lush with snow. Temperatures in Sydney have apparently never, in recorded history, dropped below freezing, although they’ve gotten awfully close, in my decade here! At any rate, we don’t get any snow – for better and for worse.

There are definitely perks to having such relatively mild winters. On a nice, sunny winter’s day, it can be warm enough to wear shorts and t-shirts, especially while engaged in physical activity in the sunshine. It tends to be chilly in the shade, but I can eat lunch outdoors, if I’m sitting in the sun, out of the wind. 

Nice though that is, I sometimes wonder whether we’re missing out on something – not just in regards to the aesthetics of snow or the fun we can have with it, but extending into the correspondence realm. Earlier this year I wrote about our individual perception of environmental stimuli, like heat & cold, and their correspondences to love and the lack thereof. I’ve since come across an article in a New Church Canadian from a few years back which extolled the benefits of winter, the hush and beauty of the pure, new snow. In it Rev. Jared Buss observed that

“Winter is a time for waiting, and for stillness; it represents a state of spiritual cold, a state of darkness, but it also illustrates for us how the mercy of the Lord is with us even in these states. He is with us, waiting for us to wake up, to warm up to His life. ‘Snow signifies natural truth, which is like snow when it is in the memory only; but it is made spiritual by love, as snow is made rainwater by heat.’ (Apocalypse Explained 644.13)”
(Jared Buss article in New Church Canadian, Issue 183, Jan/Feb 2018)

Rev. Brad Heinrichs’s latest book will be a useful addition to any New Church parent’s reading list. I was especially drawn to the subtitle: “Parenting Principles from the Word: Passing Your Faith to Your Children.” As a mother of four young children growing up quickly, this is something I think about often. Am I doing enough to introduce my kids to the habits and practices which will serve as a spiritual foundation in adulthood? 

Rev. Heinrichs, a husband and father of a large family, says people often ask him what the secret is to raising children who grow to love the Lord and His Word. As he sets out to answer this question, he notes that the first state of the church as described in Coronis is the appearance of the Lord and then a calling and covenanting. Instruction and introduction to the church make up the second state (47-52). With this in mind, he encourages parents to repeatedly call their children to the church and to remind them of the Lord’s covenant, just as the Lord called Abram, Moses and Joshua.

To this end, Rev. Heinrichs offers twenty principles drawn from the Word. Some are simple: remember the Sabbath, teach the Commandments, and work together as a family. Others are more challenging or less obvious: help children decide who they want to be, challenge “wild asses” to compel themselves, and encourage them to persevere. He elaborates on each point and offers supporting passages from the Word.

I am a New Church old woman of three score years and twenty-one, which is why this is my last contribution to the journal. There comes a time in our lives when ‘enough’ presents itself as a desirable option.

In the interests of the positive I believe that I should focus on gratitude. Our world today is not so different from the one I was born into: 1942 in Bonnie Scotland with the world at war. I could almost say that it is the same script with different players. Ego, revenge and greed continue to dominate action. But the earth is still vibrant with people of character whose principles and love of the Lord safeguard them against the most noxious evils.  Because we are all beloved children of God, we can freely choose to follow Him and fight our weaknesses with His help until we face the ultimate challenges of forgiveness and love for all. Hopefully, our aim will be to live long enough to overcome our grievances.

One of the sweet balms of old age is thankfulness. As I look at my life, I can clearly see the hand of the Lord’s agency at work.  I give thanks, too, for my children and grandchildren, whom I love and admire, and friends who have become family of choice. A happy marriage, too, is a constant source of blessing. Ken and I will celebrate our sixtieth wedding anniversary in January to mark a lifetime of comfort, support and joy. Perfection, of course, is unattainable in life, as we are fallible human beings, but eternity promises abundance.

In the mid-1800s, a young man named William Loring Worcester and his father, Rev. John Worcester, took an unhurried camping trip in the valley of the Nile River and all over the Holy Land, consulting the Bible as they went.  Imagine these two, taking their time, finding and discovering the places they had only read about; and in that time period, much of what they saw would not yet have been greatly changed by the advance of modern civilization. Both men were significant figures in the early New Church movement in America.  They were particularly fascinated by and well-versed in the knowledge of correspondences, so that what they were looking at probably held unusual depths of meaning.  William must have taken copious notes and made drawings, along with taking black and white photos, as evidenced in the books he went on to write.  

The camping trip happened right after William graduated from Harvard, where he had studied science because his father advised him that a knowledge of science “was one of the best preparations for a New Church ministry,”* and William intended to enter the ministry. After the camping trip, William attended the New Church Theological School which existed at that time in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  William was then ordained and began his ministry as an assistant to Rev. Chauncey Giles in Philadelphia. (Rev. Giles is the author of the piece about the ministry of flowers which was the subject of my November 2022 post.)