{"id":141,"date":"2011-01-03T06:56:27","date_gmt":"2011-01-03T06:56:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/lettinggo\/2011\/01\/the-love-of-winter.html"},"modified":"2011-01-03T06:56:27","modified_gmt":"2011-01-03T06:56:27","slug":"the-love-of-winter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/2011\/01\/the-love-of-winter.html","title":{"rendered":"The Love of Winter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It always amazes me on sun-bright mornings such as this one how I could have ever forgotten just how much beauty hides in a winter day. The ground is covered in rich brown tones borrowed from curling leaves. Here and there pop up patches of fall-parched grasses just greening, reborn from early rains. And, more than anything else, the stark trees of winter stand like nature&#8217;s exclamation points.&nbsp; <\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<div>How I love the trees of early winter, so sparsely dressed in their few remaining leaves, barely hanging on otherwise barren limbs. Their collective voice speaks in a brusque tongue of richer days gone by and of colder days to come.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>But it&#8217;s the unspoken story these bared trees tell that helps warm and strengthen me most. For when the trees are full, and green, theirs is a story already told.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Of course they can be put through an unknown dance by late summer winds, or catch the last moments of the setting sun and stand there, shimmering, in contrast to their own strange shadows. But even so, <i>all that they are is in sight<\/i>. And <i>this<\/i> is why I love trees in winter: With their last garments of green removed, I feel more intimate with them, as though neither of us can hide anything from one another.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>If trees move through seasons &#8212; and their loveliness only changes to reveal itself in new forms &#8212; then why not consider that Love has Her seasons too? And is any season more beautiful than another, or is it just that we tend to forget those very special elements each has to offer in its own time and on its terms?&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Is spring greater than winter? Summer more important than fall? Don&#8217;t they really need one another in order to be all that they are?&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It always amazes me on sun-bright mornings such as this one how I could have ever forgotten just how much beauty hides in a winter day. The ground is covered in rich brown tones borrowed from curling leaves. Here and there pop up patches of fall-parched grasses just greening, reborn from early rains. And, more&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":232,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,73],"tags":[78,358,244,357,356],"class_list":["post-141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-letting-go","category-love-relationships","tag-love","tag-nature","tag-seasons","tag-seeing-the-whole-picture","tag-winter"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Love of Winter - Letting Go with Guy Finley<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/2011\/01\/the-love-of-winter.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Love of Winter - Letting Go with Guy Finley\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It always amazes me on sun-bright mornings such as this one how I could have ever forgotten just how much beauty hides in a winter day. 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And, more&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/2011\/01\/the-love-of-winter.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Letting Go with Guy Finley\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/Guy-Finley-260924340633\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-01-03T06:56:27+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Guy Finley\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@guy_finley\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Love of Winter - Letting Go with Guy Finley","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/2011\/01\/the-love-of-winter.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Love of Winter - Letting Go with Guy Finley","og_description":"It always amazes me on sun-bright mornings such as this one how I could have ever forgotten just how much beauty hides in a winter day. 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His ideas cut straight to the heart of our most important personal and social issues - relationships, success, addiction, stress, peace, happiness, freedom - and lead the way to a higher life. Finley is the Founder and Director of Life of Learning Foundation, a nonprofit Center for Spiritual Discovery. He is the acclaimed author of \"The Secret of Letting Go\" and more than 45 other books and audio programs that have sold over two million copies in 26 languages worldwide. His work is widely endorsed by doctors, business professionals, celebrities, and religious leaders of all denominations. Through Life of Learning Foundation, Guy has presented over 5,000 unique self-realization seminars to thousands of grateful students throughout North America and Europe over the past 20 years and has been a guest on over 700 television and radio shows, including national appearances on ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and NPR. The Foundation's popular Key Lesson e-mails featuring inspirational quotes by Guy are read each week by a hundred thousand subscribers in 142 countries. Guy speaks four times each week on inner-life principles at Life of Learning Foundation's home in Merlin, Oregon. These meetings are ongoing and open to the public. For more information about Life of Learning Foundation, Guy Finley, and their life-changing messages, visit guyfinley.org. \"Guy Finley is...one of the leading experts at the forefront of human potential.\" -Nightingale Conant \"Guy Finley has helped millions live fuller, more peaceable lives.\" -Barnes and Noble","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.guyfinley.org","https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/Guy-Finley-260924340633\/","https:\/\/x.com\/guy_finley"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/author\/gfinley"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/232"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}