What Is Born Through Hibernation?

During the winter in nature, many animals hibernate.

The most well-known example, perhaps the mascot of hibernation, is the bear. However, many species such as honeybees, dormice, bats, and ground squirrels hibernate. For them, hibernation is a time of setting aside the business of daily activities of foraging or hunting and allowing the body to be reborn.

While, technically, humans don’t hibernate, we do slow down from the hustle and bustle of daily life and allow perspective to evolve. In the new year, society compels us to make resolutions and achieve goals. But the winter season beckons us to a very different way of being. Winter coaxes us into hibernation, of sorts, consisting of stillness, silence, patience, letting go, and being in the inner spaces of self.

Hibernation is a time of rest for the bears, honeybees, ground squirrels, and other animals that typically hibernate. Humans do not physically hibernate, but we can spiritually hibernate.

Winter can teach us many things if we allow it to call us to different ways of being. Winter teaches patience. Winter has patience, after all, there is nowhere else to be. All that happens in nature still happens in winter, but more slowly. Perhaps, winter can teach us to slow down and allow what needs to happen naturally and organically. The long winter nights can teach us to enjoy the pleasures of solitude, dreaming, and contemplation. Winter opens a space in which one can mass one’s energies to restore and repair rather than always striving or achieving.

When an animal awakens from the torpor of hibernation, it takes it slow and steady until its metabolism builds up. The bear or ground squirrel takes it slow, foraging close to home until their metabolism builds up before wandering farther away from their den to hunt and gather.

Spring is the time to focus our hunter-gatherer energies on what needs to be created, such as issues of social justice, or creating a new home, new job, or new art. But it is only after the time of being still and quiet in hibernation those energies can be focused on creating anew.

By Patrick Fitzgerald, Mile Hi Church Practitioner, and Bereavement Team Volunteer