Watermark

Imbolc

 

Bridget holds sacred the asp, the dandelion, the cow and her sacred bird, the oystercatcher.  They represent her in nature, and in the spring, when she rekindles the fire of the sun and makes the milk flow in plenty from the cows. ~ Mercy Van Vlack

This day, February 2, has always been important to me, because it is my grandmother's birthday. Now that she is gone, except in those she left behind, I learn that this day speaks of her well. She was filled with life, and spirit, and an exceptional ability to nurture creativity.

From Wikipedia:

Imbolc is one of the four principal festivals of the Irish calendar, celebrated among Gaelic peoples and some other Celtic cultures either at the beginning of February or at the first local signs of Spring. Most commonly it is celebrated on February 2, as this is the cross-quarter day on the solar calendar, halfway between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox. Originally dedicated to the goddess Brigid, in the Christian period it was adopted as St Brigid's Day. In Scotland the festival is also known as Là Fhèill Brìghde, in Ireland as Lá Fhéile Bríde, and in Wales as Gwyl Ffraed.

Imbolc is traditionally a time of weather prognostication, and the old tradition of watching to see if serpents or badgers came from their winter dens is perhaps a precursor to the North American Groundhog Day ...

... Fire and purification are an important aspect of this festival. Brigid (also known as Brighid, Bríde, Brigit, Brìd) is the goddess of poetry, healing and smithcraft. As both goddess and saint she is also associated with holy wells, sacred flames, and healing. The lighting of candles and fires represents the return of warmth and the increasing power of the Sun over the coming months.

I think that what interests me in paganism (which would horrify my grandmother) is that it reconnects us, as humans, to the nature we sometimes pretend we are above. Through image and story and metaphor, it reminds us that we all experience the cycles of nature, no matter how inattentive we may be. We are pulled by the moon, our bodies respond to the shortening and the lengthening of light, without our will.

Jonathan Young tells us, in Imbolc, A Day for the Queen of Heaven:

. . . We can think of the deities as symbols of inner mystery. If we ponder the images in the stories as if they had appeared in our dreams, we will discover many valuable insights . . .

The symbolism of wells and springs reflects the connection to the waters of life that emerge from unseen sources. In psychological terms, this could signify the wisdom of the unconscious that flows from mysterious origins. The key is developing a practice of receptivity. . .

Brigid’s protection of agriculture and poetry underscores the need to tend our inner fertility. Tending our forms of creativity is crucial to a fulfilling life. The ancients believed that gifts of expression were only on loan. We are reminded to remain grateful, and to be good custodians of artistic talents.

Her association with fire also pertains to the creative life. Finding passion in our work is a major achievement. Handling our energies well requires maturity. It takes effort to find a balance where we have vitality without being consumed.

The plume of fire radiating from her head connects her to the life of the mind. She is the patron of scholars and colleges. One implication is that learning is a form of service to the divinities. She is also the protector of travelers. This applies to both those who explore new terrains and those seekers who are on inner journeys.

Brigid is said to have invented the fervent Irish mourning wail called keening. Part of her presence resides in the faerie spirit whose keening can be heard at night in times of grief. This link reminds us to respect our losses. Experiences of renewal often include bereavement. We continually suffer losses, especially in the moments of passage. Claiming our wholeness includes valuing the sorrow for that which is no more.

I begin to suspect that, if I were to choose a goddess of my own, Brigid would be the one -- though I'm certain she appears in many guises, in all cultures -- as does spring. She's certainly more evocative, for me, than our Ground Hog:

Just a note, that I am very pleased to have found the CENTER FOR STORY & SYMBOL; there is much there to explore.
 

Easter in Montana

Well, OK -- not this year, at least not here in Missoula -- though I see snow warnings for other parts of the state. Kris brought me a basket with sweet jelly beans, dark chocolate eggs, and a wind-up snowman she forgot to put in my Solstice stocking.

I realize it's an oddity for someone pushing sixty, but I adore wind-up toys.

Whatever spiritual practice you do, or do not, ascribe to -- all of us here in the northern hemisphere can celebrate spring and fertility today -- eggs, rabbits, tulips -- enjoy them all.

EDITED to add: Patia points us to Eostre.

Posie is More Than Cozy

My 30 Day Photo Challenge Flickr Set

I chose this photo for today, because I wanted to quote Posie Gets Cozy, and I thought she might like this little domestic image. I found this blog via David Kline, at The Well. This is just a brief exerpt from a long, amazing post:

. . . I don't remember many, many things about the hospital, but I remember that moment, when we laughed. I had a vision about the world when I was there. It came to me one night as if a little door opened and I looked through and eavesdropped on the truth. I saw that the world was constantly falling apart, it was always in a state of little things always falling apart, and then there were these brigades of individual human angels, with kind eyes, apples and stitches, repairing, fixing, mending, patting, bandaging the wounds of the world, and putting it back together, piece by tiny piece. I hadn't known that repair was done on a gestural level, a cellular one . . .

. . . I absolutely do not believe that everything happens for a reason; I never did, and I still don't. I believe that we fashion sense out of the things that happen, and create a kind of meaning in the result. And at the end of the day, you just gotta plow on through! There is no time to waste or worry . . .

Good writing, and a fun blog. And things to buy -- what else could one ask for?

Oh! And she used to live in Montana!

Synchronicity - Wasteland & Green World

In Crossing to Avalon [the book I was reading when I discovered the Blogging the Artist's Way group] in the chapter called The Wasteland: Depression and Despair, Jean Shinoda Bolen tells the story of one of her patients:

His "nightmare" was actually a waking experience that probably lasted only a matter of seconds. It had occurred . . . at 2:00 P.M. on December 21. (Though he was unaware of it, December 21 is the winter solstice, the darkest time of the year; there could not have been a more symbolic date.) He was in a crosswalk near Union Square in San Francisco, in the midst of Christmas shoppers and holiday decorations, when suddenly he felt as if a motion picture had stopped and the scene had frozen. First motion and sound dropped away, and everyone and everything was suspended in a silent vacuum; then, as he watched in horror, all color drained out -- it was like "watching the world suddenly bleed to death" -- until everything was lifeless, immobile, and in shades of gray.

A moment later, everything was as it had been before . . .

He felt like he had gotten a glimpse of the ultimate reality, and it was empty, lifeless, meaningless. "This was what life really was like, what lay beyond the maya, or the illusion of life," he thought . . .

Most depressions that take such a toll in spirit last for many, many months, while his was over in a matter of seconds, minutes at the most. I told him that it was the mystical opposite of illumination. It was an experience of "endarkenment" as profound in its capacity to affect him as an experience of enlightenment and subsequent recollection might be.

I have had this experience. This exact experience.

Except it was the opposite.

It is nearly as vivid -- and indescribable -- to me today as it was when it occurred about thirty-five years ago. I was in my early twenties. It was summer -- we could even intuit that it was summer solstice.

I was walking, as I did daily, the two miles or so between work and home, in Billings, Montana. I don't recall paying any more attention than usual to the cement schoolyard on my left, or the paved street on my right, or the sidewalk under my feet -- but I noticed a weed pushing through the sidewalk crack, and then, suddenly, I was suspended in a silent vacuum, watching the green world explode around me.

Stems pushed up from the ground, cracking pavement, becoming vines and trees. It was as though I was in a timeless bubble, watching centuries unfold before me. Plants climbed buildings; structures cracked and eroded and shattered under the weight of vines, until any indication of human habitation was gone. It was all jungle, wild and green and very, very alive.

A moment later, everything was as it had been before . . .

I was standing on the sidewalk, on an ordinary street, on an ordinary day. But I knew that what had happened to me, what I had felt, was not ordinary, and I tried to hold it all the way home -- knowing that it would slip away, that feeling that has no language. And it did.

But the memory of it did not. The certainty of it -- that this was not crazy, this was not an hallucination -- this was something else, something real, even if outside of everyday experience -- that certainty stayed with me, too. Has stayed with me, all these silent years.

Bolen says:

His particular spiritual path was taking him through the desert or wasteland; he was on the via negativa, the path where soul encounters negation and pain . . . why some travel the via positiva while others must travel the via negativa is one of those unknowables.

I suspect that those who travel any spiritual path, travel both.

Despair

There are always moments when one feels empty and estranged. Such moments are most desirable, for it means the soul has cast its moorings and is sailing for distant places. This is detachment-- when the old is over and the new has not yet come. If you are afraid the state may be distressing, but there is really nothing to be afraid of. Remember the instruction: What ever you come across--go beyond.

- Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Quote discovered, gratefully, at Strangechord.

Bumper Sticker

Bumper Sticker,
originally uploaded by TerranceDC.

From Terrance at The Republic of T

Late Night Thinking

I look and look for my notes on a lecture (years ago) by Pattiann Rogers; then realize that even if I find them, there is no certainty that my notes accurately reflect what she said. What I remember is:

• Science is the new religion. It is what we believe in, even when we do not understand it. Do we understand, in our minds, in our bodies, why the airplane does not fall from the sky? Still, we step onto it.
• It is the poet's responsibility to -- explain? elucidate? give voice to? -- the religion of the time. We are failing.

Karen Armstrong's point, in The Battle for God, that:

• The fundamentalist error is to treat mythos ["a mode of knowledge rooted in silence and intuitive insight which gives meaning to life but which cannot be explained in rational terms"] as logos ["rational, logical, or scientific discourse"]
• The secularist error is to think that logos is all there is

Is mythos not the poet's role? So we are to, somehow, imbue logos/science with spirit? But science is spirit -- no? -- attention to the real, passion -- and sometimes, too often, cruelty without cause.

Can we study, learn, attend, without dissecting?

Who can look at the Hubble photographs, and not feel awe? not see spirit?

Oh, the same person who looks at a chickadee, or a grasshopper, or a stone, and does not see it.

So the poet must say:  look!  see!  -- a greater poet than I am.  An Emily.

I have wanted a non-gendered pronoun, so that I could speak of a creature (rampaging raccoon) whose gender I do not know, without denying its personhood, without making it an it -- but instead, I should be infusing the it pronoun with personhood, with spirit. For the teaching- stone is an it -- the mountain, the river, the garden --

-- & I will break the stone, weed the garden, dam the river, eat the raccoon (the cow, the chicken, the salmon) -- even though -- while -- acknowledging it is a person -- it is in-spirited --

because I am not consistent
because I am not logical
because I am not moral?
because I am an animal?

[is "it" a pronoun?]

Circle of Labyrinths

Today
Sunday, January 23, 02005

Join us in a
        Worldwide Circle of Labyrinths        
        to commemorate the victims and
        the survivors of the 2004 Tsunami

Photo Gallery

Online Interactive Labyrinth
Make Your Own
Open Spaces| Sacred Places

via Etherealgirl

Interviews With God

This is a kestrel, in the tall dead spruce -- eyeing the sparrows at my feeder, who do not know it's there.  This reminds me, for some reason (which we will not examine here) of these.  The first was sent to me by my aunt.  It is filled with platitudes (but then, platitudes are that for a reason) and lovely landscape photography.  I prefer the second. 

The Interview With God Presentation

Augustine Interviews God

Solstice Card

02004 Solstice Letter