How much can human heart take when inner winter lasts forever?

By David McElroy · February 21, 2021

The weather’s been miserable here. We went through a bitterly cold period a couple of weeks ago. We’ve had a couple of other times when strong storms came through, thrashing us with heavy wind and deluging us with rain. By southern standards, it’s been a bad winter.

All the trees around my house look bare and lifeless. My back yard is littered with limbs and branches that I haven’t yet cleared away, debris from a couple of the recent storms. There’s one large tree branch — the one you see above — that crashed down one evening so close that it almost hit my house.

I was in the back yard Sunday afternoon looking at all the debris and the bare trees when I realized that what I was looking at matched the sour mood I’ve been feeling. It seems as though my heart has been experiencing winter for a long time. And then I remembered a simple question from an old song.

“Can you stand the weather — if winter lasts forever?”

And I don’t know how much more winter my heart can stand.

When I was at a grocery store today, the place was packed. I couldn’t help thinking that I didn’t like the thought of being one of these creatures. They all annoyed me, for some reason. I felt completely lost and alien among them.

The world hasn’t changed. I’ve changed. My circumstances have changed. The way I see the world has changed. It started many years ago, but it’s accelerated. I’m more clear than I’ve ever been about what’s important in this life, but my understanding has left me alienated from a dysfunctional culture which is bumper to bumper on a freeway toward some metaphorical hell.

All of the things I once valued now seem useless. They’re the things which this culture taught me to value — and they’re the things that almost everybody else still values, including most who call themselves Christians.

The things which used to seem like ridiculous and idealistic nonsense to me — love for others, community closeness, voluntary sacrifice and shared values — now seem paramount. They’re the things which are ignored by “success culture” here. They’re seen as the sort of things which children might learn at church or school, but which they learn to shed when they join “the real world” as adults.

I don’t know how to make my way from modern western culture to some form of a culture where my values are appreciated and accepted. I don’t know how to build a community around myself or to join a community where my voluntary values are practiced. And I don’t know how to create a family in which to practice the love and understanding and oneness which I’ve come to believe are central to all of this.

It hasn’t been winter outside for quite two months. That winter will be over in another month or two. Spring is just around the corner. But it feels as though it’s been a long and dark winter in my heart for many years now.

When I thought of that question — about winter lasting forever — I thought of the entire song from which the question comes. I don’t know what caused Reese Roper to write the song, but he had to understand some of what I’m feeling to have written it. (I’ve embedded the song below.)

Back when the angels of heaven would sing
Days when I still made you feel something
And before what might be
Became what’s already been
Blizzards and bygones
The frost and no thaw
Airways constricting
And vessels withdraw
And you look around but find yourself all alone
And you hunker down but the cold’s
Already in your bones
I lit a fire
It started then stopped
Elements will conspire
And mercury drop
And you look around but find yourself all alone
And you hunker down but the cold’s
Already in your bones
There’s a flicker of desire
And a memory of youth
A faintly
Glowing fire for some truth
Can you stand the weather
If winter lasts forever?
Can you stand the weather
If winter lasts forever?
Can you stand the weather?
— Reese Roper for Five Iron Frenzy,
“Blizzards and Bygones”

Roper wrote the song for a group called Five Iron Frenzy, which came out of Christian music, so I know he shares my faith and values. But even when you have faith about the ultimate truth, that doesn’t make it any easier to live in this fallen world. And it doesn’t make it any easier to figure out how to live in accordance with the value of love when you’re in a world which thinks love really just means sex.

Right now, I do “look around but find [myself] all alone.” That might be my fault. In fact, it probably is. I could go back and point out mistakes I’ve made which haven’t helped. But I can also say that after all that I’ve learned, “There’s a flicker of desire and a memory of youth. A faintly glowing fire for some truth.”

I can’t live the way the rest of the world wants to, but I can’t really do it without others who are like me — spiritually, philosophically, intellectually, psychologically, emotionally — and I’ve not yet figured out how to connect with them.

I can regret that I didn’t learn all that I’ve learned much earlier in my life, but that doesn’t change anything. Things happened as they did. I had a lot of difficult learning experiences — and I have no choice but to continue down the path from where I am now.

I need for spring to come in my heart. I need to sweep out the old dead things and let new love and light and life grow. But tonight, it’s still winter. There’s a bitterly cold winter outside my house — and a very different sort of winter that’s hurting my heart.

I desperately long for spring — and I cling to faith that spring is coming.

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I’m seeing a lot of simplistic and dishonest explanations right now for the current rioting in France. Those on the populist far right claim it’s all about Muslim immigrants to France disrupting the culture. Their message is that this sort of thing is going to happen in the U.S. unless “we defend the border.” On the far left, socialists and their fellow travelers claim the riots are all about wealthy people in France not paying enough taxes, resulting in cuts to government services. The truth is far more complicated, but it’s rooted in the decline of population growth in Europe. There simply aren’t enough young workers paying into the tax system anymore, so cuts in social services were inevitable. There is genuine cultural tension as more and more people immigrate from other countries, but government cuts to education and other services are even more important to what’s happening. The situation is complicated, so don’t let dishonest people with U.S. political agendas tell you that it happens to support whatever they were already promoting for partisan reasons.

Here’s another reason to appreciate the cats in your life: New research involving 93 countries found that places with more cats per person also tended to have happier people. The researchers say the finding fits with previous evidence that living with pets can reduce loneliness and stress while providing companionship, emotional attachment and social support. The study doesn’t prove that cats cause greater happiness, but it certainly adds to the evidence that sharing your home — and your life — with a cat might be good for you.

The company that owns Facebook and Instagram is heavily promoting its new AI-based software assistant called Muse, but people who are using it as it was designed are incredibly foolish. An early adopter of the software discovered that a few days ago when he advertised an item for sale on Facebook Marketplace — and he inadvertently gave Muse full authority to act on his behalf. The software agreed to a lowball offer made by another Facebook user and then gave that man the home address of the man for whom he was an agent. The software told the buyer that the seller was home and waiting for him. When the buyer showed up and waited angrily, the would-be buyer left an angry review for the man. And this angry man had the seller’s home address. It was only well after that that the software reported what it had done and admitted it had made a mistake. I won’t be putting that much power into the hands of any software. I think anyone who agrees to such terms is a fool. And the software’s user agreement says you’re responsible for purchases the software makes in your name. Nope.

Meet my new girlfriend. Her name is Meg. And she’s my little sweetheart. A couple of months ago, a neighbor across the street told me about a new stray in the neighborhood that she and I were both soon feeding. The cat had been very skittish about contact and she had a lot of scabs and parasites in her fur, but a trip to the vet last week revealed that she was otherwise in good health. The vet estimates her to be 1 to 2 years old. I named her for Meg Murry, the 13-year-old protagonist of Madeleine L’Engle’s wonderful book, “A Wrinkle in Time.” (Please read the book. Don’t watch the horrible movie.) Since we lost Lucy almost a year ago, it seems appropriate that we finally have a new little girl to join the household. She’s already captured my heart, but Alex, Oliver and Sam aren’t there quite yet.

There’s nothing socially acceptable that’s as dangerous as drinking alcohol. Most people grow up being told to “drink responsibly” — and all of us see people abusing this drug in one way or another — but the truth is that drinking alcohol is always a terrible risk. The alcohol in these drinks is toxic and the human liver has to work hard to filter the toxins out. What most people don’t realize is that alcohol is classified as a known carcinogen by the World Health Organization — because of the well-established connection between imbibing and various cancers. Many people have taken refuge behind the idea that light or moderate drinking might be safe, but a new study shows that drinking even one drink a day increases the risks of 10 types of cancer. When I was a teen-ager, I looked around and saw the negative effects that this behavior had on a lot of people and decided not to start drinking, so I’ve never even tried this poison. The evidence keeps piling up that I was lucky to have come to that conclusion early.

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