Winter’s Structure

On a busy street, just outside the crowded downtown, there is a building. I’ve watched it emerge from the rubble practically since its conception; layer upon layer. I watched as the foundation baked in the late summer sunshine. I watched as the delicate steel skeleton frame took shape. I watched as the miles of wiring and plumbing and pipelines were stretched like veins within its shell. Finally, I watched as walls were wrapped around its exterior, sheltering it from the cold winds.

I know this building. I know what it is made of. I know its strength—and I could identify its weaknesses. Because I have seen it from beginning to end, I know this building.

Not all buildings, though, can be observed from the ground up. For that matter, neither can most other things: plants, trees, cities, industries, people. We encounter them at various stages, when the things that have made them up have long been concealed beneath their outer wrappings. We take them as we find them.

But there are times, circumstances, that seem to strip back the layers of our constructed selves, so that suddenly what lies beneath is exposed.

There is a building in a different part of town that tells this story. It stood tall and complete for generations, a landmark on its tree-lined street, until the day it was enveloped in flames. The fire stripped away the outer layers, the carefully constructed inner walls, every trace of the polished exterior it once presented to the world. In its place is a skeleton of the house, the bare charred frame that held it fast all these years. In the wake of the flames, I know this building, too.

Madeleine L’Engle once wrote, “Winter reveals structure.” We live most of our lives in the full-leafed bounty of spring, and summer, and fall. In these seasons our branches are furled with greenery and what lies beneath is hidden. But winter holds something different: we shed our outer selves until, much like a charred house or an infant building, our very structure is revealed.

Winter is not a season of comfort. To be exposed is to be made vulnerable, to have suffered loss. It is even to fear that the leaves may never grow to hide our nakedness. We come into our own winters in periods of grief and uncertainty, of illness or financial ruin, of unexpected calamity. We watch as layer upon layer of the selves we’ve known falls away. What we are left with feels bare, ugly, empty.

But we must look closer. What remains isn’t the fragment, it’s the very essence of what we have always been. It’s the very skeleton that has carried us through all the seasons that have come before; and it will carry us through all the seasons yet to come. It is our structure. And it is an opportunity.

If we are wise, we will watch. Watch through the winter months, studying the shape and form and strength of the innermost structure of ourselves. Watch as the spring coaxes leaves to cover us, as each layer is built over our branches. And when summer arrives and we stand tall and full and alive, we can say: I know this tree. I know this building. I know, in every part, this soul.

Perhaps it’s winter that gives us the truest view of ourselves.