"Never cut a tree down in the wintertime. Never make a negative decision in the low time. Never make your most important decisions when you are in your worst moods. Wait. Be patient. The storm will pass. The spring will come"
About this Quote
Schuller’s line works because it smuggles pastoral care into a deceptively practical metaphor. “Never cut a tree down in the wintertime” isn’t environmental advice; it’s an anti-impulse manifesto. Winter stands in for the mood weather of depression, grief, panic, burnout - the season when the world looks permanently stripped and every option feels like an amputation. By turning an internal state into a visible landscape, he gives people permission to distrust their own certainty when it’s fueled by pain.
The repetition of “Never” sounds like commandment language, and that’s the point: when you’re in a “low time,” you don’t need nuanced options, you need guardrails. As a televangelist-era clergyman, Schuller specialized in a hopeful, self-help-inflected Christianity that met Americans where therapy culture and faith overlapped. This quote fits that lineage: moral instruction framed as emotional regulation, sanctified patience as a survival skill.
The subtext is less “feel better” than “don’t burn your life down while you’re hurting.” “Negative decision” is intentionally vague, letting it cover everything from quitting a job to ending a marriage to harming yourself. The kicker is the eschatology of seasons: “The storm will pass. The spring will come.” It’s not an argument; it’s a promise. Schuller knows hope doesn’t arrive as evidence - it arrives as an image you can hold onto until your nervous system calms down enough to make choices you can live with.
The repetition of “Never” sounds like commandment language, and that’s the point: when you’re in a “low time,” you don’t need nuanced options, you need guardrails. As a televangelist-era clergyman, Schuller specialized in a hopeful, self-help-inflected Christianity that met Americans where therapy culture and faith overlapped. This quote fits that lineage: moral instruction framed as emotional regulation, sanctified patience as a survival skill.
The subtext is less “feel better” than “don’t burn your life down while you’re hurting.” “Negative decision” is intentionally vague, letting it cover everything from quitting a job to ending a marriage to harming yourself. The kicker is the eschatology of seasons: “The storm will pass. The spring will come.” It’s not an argument; it’s a promise. Schuller knows hope doesn’t arrive as evidence - it arrives as an image you can hold onto until your nervous system calms down enough to make choices you can live with.
Quote Details
| Topic | Hope |
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