In this season of springtime in the Northern Hemisphere, woodlands and fields are awakening. But their season of winter sleep has not been a time of dormancy. In their winter slumber, sturdy trees and delicate shrubs have been dreaming, and buds and shoots and saplings have been winter-whispered into being. This is how springtime blossoms come about—in the quiet whispers of winter slumber. The work-a-day business of summer growth and autumn transition ceases, and in the quiet of winter, the woodlands dream. They listen. And behold, spring comes again.
We see a similar movement in Joseph as he faced his challenge. He did the interior pondering of the righteous,
the caring contemplation of the compassionate. It was the work-a-day spiritual labor of summer and autumn. And then he went to sleep. In slumber, the ponderings of a righteous and compassionate man yielded to the quiet whispers of an angel who told of a tender bud from an ancient shoot that will lead to a new spring. And Joseph listened. His own plans were righteous and compassionate, but God called him beyond his usual spiritual and religious logic.
We, too, are guided by religious beliefs and compassionate hearts. But do we also pause for winter-like quiet in which we can listen to the deeper, quieter whisperings of the Spirit? Do we let our work-a-day faith enter a winter-wood of beholding silence?
The attentive ear of the slumbering Joseph is essential to Matthew’s description of how the birth of Jesus Christ came about. Our pauses are also key. Like the springtime buds emerging from the woodlands’ winter dreams, Christ continues to be born into the world through our own attentiveness to the whispering Spirit.

Sr. Lynn Elisabeth Meadows

Lynn Elisabeth Meadows, OSB, is prioress of Sacred Heart Monastery in Cullman, Alabama.