some thoughts on wintering
An essay on person v. persona, alongside that thing called the pandemic
I finally got around to reading Wintering by
this last week. “Ugh” feels like the only appropriate descriptor at this point, not because the book itself was bad but because it finally came to a close.I didn't want the story to end.
Wintering, after all, is something each of us have lived through, some certainly more than others. On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a pandemic; a season of wintering began for all of us, in each our different parts of the globe.
Sadness and death entered our world anew, and in more ways than one, this death and sadness was unlike any we’d ever experienced. Fear and anxiety took up permanent residence in our hearts, maybe, probably, because so much remained unknown.
When I think back on that season, I often think about how my person and my persona felt like they in a fight: who I was on the inside seemed to collide with the image I often portrayed to the outside world.
This much I remember: the day before lockdown began, I was scheduled to preach at a local church.
I sat with the text beforehand, thinking and researching and leaning into what some call the Spirit. I planned to drive forty-five minutes over to Novato, to gather with a community that had begun to feel like family.
But when schools and businesses across California shuttered their doors, churches quickly followed suit. When Sunday morning rolled around, I did not drive across the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge but instead, clomped upstairs to the guest room.
I begged the boys to talk in their whisper voices so Mama could talk to the grown-ups about God and threw excessive hints toward my husband. Doesn’t the park sound like a great idea? Wouldn’t it be great to take the boys on an adventure for the next couple of hours?
I am nothing, if not subtle in my demands.
When it came time to speak, I remember staring to the pinhole camera at the top of my computer screen. I tried not to look at my own reflection, but the explosion of dramatics before me was distracting.
There’s something that happens when I speak, you see. When storyteller meets Spirit, when the granddaughter of a Baptist preacher lets loose the words buried deep within her.
“You’re kind of, um, animated when you speak,” a critic once told me.
“Yes, and?” I replied.
His words were meant to subdue me, to quell the fire within me and make my presentation a more dignified, tamped-down version of his own.
But that morning felt different.
When the church service came to a close and screen finally went black, darkness surrounded me. I didn’t feel like a prophet or a pastor; I felt like a fraud, like an actor masquerading in holy cassocks on a dimly lit stage.
God-talk tumbled out of my mouth, but was there any real validity to my words?
Utterances of faith oftentimes rush out of me easily, without so much as a breath, let alone a second thought.
“The Great Mystery is here, now!” I’d said to those gathered on the other side of the screen. I’d been full of certainty when the camera was on, enthusiastic in my belief of the Divine, present in our broken, upside-down world.
But now, I felt like I didn’t know my left from my right. When my lips paraded a pageantry of known rhetoric, I wondered if the things of God were merely a figment of my imagination, a product of an uncanny ability to entertain the most unsuspecting of audiences and put on a show.
I suppose that’s when the question of person and persona came up: if this wasn’t the real me, then who was?
Was she the one who performs? Was she the one who critiques and wonders and doubts the validity of her performance?
Was she both?
I remember spending the rest of that day lying on the fold-out couch in the guest room, ruminating over the glittering image alive inside of me. Although the pandemic had just begun, it had already put me in a fog, sent me into a stupor of sorts.
I look back on this now and realize I had begun the process of wintering.
When the camera was on, I didn’t feel entirely there, but given the chance, I could still put on a show. I could still make it seem like I was there, like I wasn’t overwhelmed, drunk on change, and bowled over with uncertainty. An unwavering, summery version of myself showed up in that moment. She knew how to override feelings of lethargy, how to entertain the peoples and speak a good God-talk.
“Maybe your person and your persona are in a fight,” my friend Erin later said to me.
She told me how her pastor often reminds their faith community to be a person, not a persona. “Person” and “persona” both come from the same ancient Latin word, a word originally referring to the theatrical mask an actor wore; only later did the word refer to the character played by the actor wearing a mask.
I want my person and persona to be the same, for my inner and outer selves to dance in unison. Too easily, my persona can become like a game face, a certain kind of social offering.
Like the root of the word, persona can become a “kind of mask designed on the one hand to make a definite impression upon others and on the other to conceal the truth nature of the individual.”
Both of these words are my identity, though, even if one is true and one is mere suggestion.
The charismatic, summery persona I exude to the world is the same person who often feels overwhelmed by the things of winter, rendered prostrate by the weight of the world.
Both of these selves are loved.
Both of these selves are known and true.
Maybe someday these disparate parts will integrate and merge, one into the other. They’ll take notice of each other; they won’t just play nice.