The season of winter, with all its darkness and dreariness, is likely to evoke a chorus of groans, not filled with enthusiasts. But in her newest book, The Stillness of Winter, author and Sukkat Shalom member, Barbara Mahany, implores you not to dismiss the long night of the year. Each of the months, December, January, and February, hold their own gifts, their own sacred instruction. Each invites into stillness, into the quietude that allows us to hear the still small voice, to make room for those invisible deep-down stirrings, but January especially invites us to begin again, to scan our innermost selves, to edit the rough draft of who we are and who we’ve become, and to reach a little bit deeper toward the holiness we were meant to be. Join us for a lively conversation, and a little bit of reading, as together we put our minds to the possibility that is January, the fresh start of the year.

Barbara Mahany, a longtime (former) staff writer at the Chicago Tribune and a longtime member of Sukkat Shalom, is the author of four books, with another — probing the intersection of the sacred and the marvels of the natural world — on the way. Her newest book, The Stillness of Winter, a compilation of essays, recipes, and wonderments, was published in fall 2020, just in time for a COVID winter. She lives in Wilmette, with her husband, Blair Kamin, and she is the mother of Will and Teddy, both of whom grew up at Sukkat Shalom.