"In the midst of winter I at last discovered that there was in me an invincible summer.” Albert Camus, Retour à Tipasa
For today's Sunday post, I turn to the above quote from 20th century, French Existential philosopher and writer Albert Camus. (1913-1960). Today is St. Valentine's Day, now practiced globally as a celebration of love. Originally, February 14 was set as a Feast Day in AD 496 to commemorate one of the early Christian martyrs, Saint Valentine of Rome. Over a thousand years later, the day had a celebration of romantic love. Today, depending on the culture, it has expanded to include the spectrum of love. In the Northern Hemisphere, Valentine's Day is a winter holiday that bridges the time between New Year's and holiday celebrations of Spring. It gives us a chance to consider the heart of life, including the bond of love that brings us back to a focus on relationships that are essential to human survival, perhaps more essential in the dead of winter. There are of course many types of love, not always easy to define. But it is an emotion that connects and unifies. Love brings a sense of invincible summer, a sense of life at its fullest. The beauty, richness and awe of life can be found in all seasons but in summer, it is no longer hidden. Life thrives.
As extreme weather and life threatening winter storms sweep across the country this week, most of us will withdraw inside and wait it out There are those who cannot because we need them to take watch and take care, as we have needed others throughout the Pandemic "storm", a metaphoric winter experience when life often seems to be frozen. Yet it isn't. Life is moving forward.
Camus's discovery arose with a transcendent experience, when he returned to his homeland Algiers, seeking something...some renewal perhaps or inner resolution after the moral devastation of WWII. On his trip he found it. "And under the glorious December light..., I found exactly what I had come seeking, what, despite the era and the world, was offered me, truly to me alone, in that forsaken nature."
Wherever you may be this February, there lays within you an invincible summer. Perhaps today is the day you too can discover it. (Susan Nettleton)