Soul Weather: Recognising the Season of Your Inner Life

Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.”
— Proverbs 4:23

There are seasons in nature—and seasons in the soul.

We know how to dress for wind and rain, how to speak of sunshine and frost. But few of us were taught to recognise the internal shifts: those quiet soul-seasons that shape how we think, feel, and move through the world.

There are days when the heart feels open and expansive, bursting with life. And there are days when we retreat inward, feeling bare or tired, uncertain of the way forward. These aren’t just moods. They are invitations. Clues. Indicators of what’s happening beneath the surface.

The writer of Proverbs urges us to guard the heart—not to wall it off, but to watch over it attentively. Because the condition of the heart flows into everything else. If we want to walk wisely, we must begin by noticing where we truly are.

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Wisdom Begins with Awareness

In our culture, there’s often an unspoken pressure to stay in perpetual motion. Productivity is prized. Even spirituality can become performance. But the way of wisdom is different.

Wisdom doesn’t begin with having the right answers. It begins with listening.

Listening to the pace of your breath.
Listening to what your body is quietly saying.
Listening to the season you are in—not the one you wish you were in, or think you should be in, but the one that’s actually here.

We can’t always control what season arrives. But we can choose to meet it with honesty, gentleness, and grace.

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Celtic Spirituality and the Rhythms of Time

Celtic Christianity developed within a landscape marked by both wildness and wonder. It carried forward the Christian liturgical year—Advent, Lent, Easter, Pentecost—yet it held a distinctive tenderness toward time, rooted in attentiveness to creation, human experience, and the movement of the Spirit.

Unlike the structured certainty of Roman systems, the Celtic approach was often poetic, fluid, and deeply incarnational. It didn’t ignore the darkness of winter or the barrenness of transition. Instead, it honoured these thresholds as sacred.

In that spirit, we are invited to notice the thresholds in our own lives—those internal turning points where something is shifting. The moment before clarity arrives. The breath before a new beginning. The ache before a release.

We don’t always need to do anything with them. Often, just paying attention is enough.

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Recognising the Season of the Soul

Just as the year moves through winter, spring, summer, and autumn, our souls have their own cycles. These may not follow the calendar, and they rarely announce themselves. But they’re real—and learning to recognise them is a path to deeper peace.

• Soul-Winter is the time of stillness. Things feel slow, unclear, or dormant. This is not failure—it’s a necessary space for rest, gestation, and hidden growth.
• Soul-Spring brings gentle beginnings. Hope stirs. Ideas emerge. But it’s fragile—what’s needed is nurture, not haste.
• Soul-Summer is when life feels full, expressive, outward. There’s momentum and joy, often a sense of clarity or creativity.
• Soul-Autumn is the season of letting go. There may be grief, reflection, and the need to release what no longer fits.

Each of these seasons offers something essential. The challenge is not to rush through them, but to receive what they bring.

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From Paths of Wisdom: 21 Invitations to Live Well

The chapbook Paths of Wisdom offers quiet invitations into the spiritual life—ones that resist urgency and instead call us into alignment with grace and presence. In Part II: Walking in Light, one reflection speaks directly to the nature of discernment during changing seasons:

“Discernment becomes your lantern. Not flashing certainty, but quiet clarity — enough to take the next step.”
(Part II – Walking in Light)

This is a helpful reframe for those seeking to rush toward clarity. Wisdom rarely gives us the full map. Instead, it offers the next right step—and trusts us to walk it.

In Part V: Resting in Wisdom, we are reminded that the voice of wisdom is never coercive:

“Wisdom of the ages, You are not the voice of panic or pressure. You are the stillness beneath the noise.”
(Part V – Resting in Wisdom)

These words carry a gentle authority. They remind us that soul-weather changes not through force, but through presence. We’re not meant to push through spiritual winter with a false smile or leap into spring before the thaw. We are invited to wait, to listen, and to trust the wisdom that speaks beneath the noise.

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Guarding the Heart

To “guard your heart” is not to keep people or life at a distance. It’s to become a wise observer of your own inner state. The Hebrew word used in Proverbs implies active care, like tending a garden. It’s a call to live awake.

Guarding your heart means noticing when something feels off, or when your energy is running low. It means recognising when old patterns are creeping in. It means learning when to say no—not as rejection, but as reverence.

To live like this isn’t selfish. It’s sacred stewardship. Because when you tend your inner life with wisdom, everything else flows from that place with more clarity, more compassion, and more grace.

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A Simple Practice

If you feel called, try this practice this week:

1. Pause in stillness.
   Find five minutes of quiet. No agenda, no pressure. Just sit.
2. Ask one question:
   What season is my soul in right now?
3. Then, if you wish, open Paths of Wisdom at random.**
   Read the entry that finds you. Let it speak into your present moment.

You don’t need to force insight. Just notice. Let the stillness do its work.

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Closing Thoughts

You are not meant to live in constant summer. Nor is winter a sign of failure. Every season carries a necessary rhythm. And each soul has its own timing.

There is wisdom in recognising where you are.

There is peace in no longer pretending to be somewhere else.

Let your spiritual life reflect the natural world around you—changing, deepening, slowing down, and coming to life again in its own good time.

Let your heart be well-tended.

And trust: whatever season you’re in, God is already there.

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