Live your questions now, and perhaps even without knowing it, you will live along some distant day into your answers.
- Rainer Maria Rilke
Though winter lays still heavy on the land and in the heart, there are signs, there are signs. Imbolg, the fire festival of Brigit returns on February 2, the quarter-day that marks the advent of the Celtic spring.
Solstice has passed us now, the light was seen, irrevocably noted, and so there is not to do but go forth from darkness into light. The hand outstretched into the unknown, the hand let go. Seasons change.
Brigit, the muse of all who create, is goddess of emergence, of inspiration. It is she who crafts and uncovers the tools, the events that teach and nurture humanity. Brigit, that captures and works the spark that it may be used by those who accept with hope and without condition.
Laid beside the hearth, Brigit's archaic corn dollies were intended to attract the goddess and her consort to ensure the fertility of the household. To us, her dollies and the intersecting arms of Brigit's woven cross represent the creative act - the timing, the meeting - that to us seems miraculous in coincidence but when seen from the vantage point of eternity, was never in question. How much more fervently we pray when we are in need.
Even as the snow falls, the sun shies low in the sky. Brigit holds the bitter, the dulled and the grieving heart. It is time to grow young again, let go, reach out your hand and find your faith in the firelight, in the warmth that is growing back to you, as it always will, in spring.