Imbolc and the Feast of St. Brigid

When I went to bed late Monday night, the half moon shone  dimly on a blanket of snow. I woke up the following morning to the sound of freezing rain bouncing off ice covered trees. By the time I left for the Cathedral, the last traces of snow and ice were melting in the margins of sidewalks and muddy yards, washed by a steady rain. As I parked my car and walked to the building where I had my first meeting, the sun shone warm on my back as robins, cardinals and blue jays congregated in the grass for a late lunch. 

Welcome to Imbolc, the season of change and transformation-- sometimes all in the course of one day.

Since we were still recovering from our first big snow of the year when February 1 rolled around, I've delayed posting about the season until I could see the tiny tell tale signs of early spring emerging from the thawing earth. 

On the Celtic calendar, February 1 is the beginning of the season of Imbolc, early spring, and the celebration of the feast of St. Brigid. The veneration of Brigid is one of those interesting conflagrations in Celtic spirituality, the coming together of a pre-Christian goddess and fifth century saint whose stories have been woven together to create a tapestry of legends that continues to intrigue and inspire. 

Brighid the goddess invented keening after the death of her son and, according to the story, was the first one to whistle in the dark to let others know of her presence. Brigid the saint traveled through time, had a magic cloak, and always seemed to find a miraculous way to provide for the sick and needy who crossed her path.  They were wise women, known for their powers of healing, and both goddess and saint are credited with being keepers of the flame and patrons of poetry.  

Part of following the path of Celtic spirituality in the 21st century is re-imagining the rituals of the past to fit the world of today. Many of the ancient rituals of Imbolc focus on hearth and home, a realm watched over by Brigid. Cleaning out clutter, kindling the hearth, lighting fires, and inviting the holy to cross the threshold are all activities for the first stirrings of spring.  Below are a few rituals, rooted in traditional celebrations of the season. 

RITUALS AND MEDITATIONS TO DO AT HOME

Blessing Home and Hearth

 In some areas of Ireland, the household rites associated with the Feast of St. Brigid began with the head of the family walking around the house three times, to bless the dwelling and those within before Brigid was invited to enter.  As many of us are twenty-first century urban and suburban dwellers, walking around your “house” may necessitate walking around an apartment building, townhouse complex, or even a city block.  As you walk, walk slowly and prayerfully, focusing your intention on bringing protection and well-being to all those within the parameter of your walk.   

Offering Hospitality

Whether she was churning a never ending supply of butter, turning well water into ale, or feeding a stray dog meat from a pot of soup meant for her father’s guest, Brigid was always ready to share food and drink with strangers and friends, animals and humans alike. Often the household rituals on her feast day included some sort of communal or family meal. Extend hospitality by sharing a meal with friends, family or neighbors. Carefully consider what dishes to prepare. As Brigid is the patron saint of cows and dairy farmers, you might want to include cheese, milk or butter as part of your menu. And she also liked beer . . . a lot.

Kindling the Flame

For thousands of years, a sacred fire burned in Kildare—first honoring the goddess Brigid and later kindled and kept by the community who honored Brigid the saint. Light a fire/candle on Imbolc and invite the three fold blessing of the flame for transformation during the coming year.

The Three-Fold Fire of Brigid

Fire in the forge that
shapes and tempers.

Fire of the hearth that
nourishes and heals.

Fire in the head that
incites and inspires.

This Week on the Celtic Calendar: Beltane

This year's Beltane fire.

On the Celtic calendar, May 1 is the celebration of Beltane, the first day of summer.  In the pastoral world of the Celtic peoples of long ago, the first day of May (or thereabouts) marked the transition from budding spring to blossoming summer.  The rituals surrounding Beltane--dancing around May poles, courting rituals, honoring the blossoming of flowers and greening of trees-- symbolize the energy of new growth and fertility evident in the natural world during this season.

Beltane is also a time of transition and purification.  Households would douse their individual fires and relight them from a common bonfire, lit on the evening of the celebration.  Livestock were often driven through a path between two bonfires in order to ensure fruitful breeding seasons.   Sometimes oatcakes or bags of flour were shared around the communal fire to ensure a good harvest.  

While most of us no longer dance around be-ribboned poles or sit around bonfires on May 1, Beltane does offer us an opportunity to reflect on where we are in the cycle of life:   new growth, fertility, or transition and purification.  For more suggestions for spiritual practices for the season, click here ..

New Year retreats now open for registration!

Review the year that has passed . . .
             Release what you need to let go . . .
                     Celebrate the milestones of 2014 . . .
                               Reflect on your intentions for 2015 . . .
                                         

This year we are pleased to offer two retreat options to better help you move mindfully into the new year . . . 

Option 1:  At-Home, On-Line

Registration fee is $45. Click here to register.

• Retreat materials sent to you ahead of time include readings, reflection activities, and meditation suggestion

• Work through the exercises and activities according to your own rhythm and schedule

• Periodic emails prompt times to pause for reflection.

• Scheduled opportunities to learn from and share with others via social media or gather your own retreat community to work through the materials in community

Option 2:  In-Person, Half Day Retreat at Washington National Cathedral

Wednesday, December 31 from 10am - 2 pm

Registration Fee is $60. Click here to register.

In addition to the benefits of the At-Home, On-Line option, the half day retreat offers you time to . . . 

• experience the retreat in a community of kindred spirits;

• enjoy guided reflections and meditations;

• explore additional resources and exercises not in the retreat packet; and

• settle into a contemplative rhythm in the quiet alcoves of the Center for Prayer and Pilgrimage with all its resources available to you.

This week on the Celtic Calendar . . . Samhain

From ghoulies and ghosties 
And long-leggedy beasties
And things that go bump in the night, 
Good Lord, deliver us! 
                                       ~Traditional Scottish Prayer

Just as the new day in the Celtic tradition begins with nightfall, so too does the new year begin as darkness closes in around us. Samhain (pronounced sow-in) starts at sun down on October 31 and marks the beginning of the new year on the Celtic calendar. 

Like other threshold times and places, the beginning of Samhain, is a thin time when the veil between heaven and earth, this world and the next, is particularly permeable. It was thought that this liminal time allowed the ghosts of ancestors to come back and visit their former homes, along with more undesirable visitors from the other world who managed to sneak through. 

Many of our Halloween traditions come from this idea of discouraging the not-so-friendly spirits from visiting. Jack-o-lanterns carved from rutabagas or turnips were placed in windows or by doorways to frighten away trickster spirits. In case scare tactics didn't work, treats of food were left as offerings for the ghosties and ghoulies and faerie folk who might be out wandering on Samhain night. Later customs saw people dressing up as these creatures, going from house to house to collect the treats and sometimes playing a trick or two on their neighbors in the process.

Community bonfires are one of the earliest Samhain traditions. Bonfires were lit in the hills or in the center of towns to keep the evil spirits at bay. As people left their homes to participate in revelries with their neighbors they'd extinguish the fire in their hearths. Before returning home, they'd take fire from the communal bonfire in order to light their home fires afresh, often encircling their houses, barns and fields with the new fire as a form of purification and blessing.

In practical terms, Samhain was a time to finish bringing in the last of the harvest, move livestock from their summer pastures to shelter closer to home, and to begin to settle in for the long, dark months of winter where light and resources were scarce. It was a season not only to take stock, but also to plan for the year ahead.

Spiritually, Samhain offers us the opportunity to honor those who have gone before us. Festivals such as Dia de Muertos and All Saints and All Souls day on the Christian calendar invite us to give thanks for the wisdom of our ancestors and the inspiration of the saints who have shaped us. During Samhain as we reflect on those who have passed out of this life, we are also called to take stock and consider the things that may be germinating in the dark, waiting to be born into this world. Samhain is a time to douse the embers of the old fire and kindle new the sparks of new passion and energy in our lives.

This week on the Celtic calendar . . . Michaelmas

"On Michaelmas Eve and Christmas,    We will all taste of the bannock." ~ Scottish Reaping Blessing

September 29 is Michaelmas, one of the cross-quarter days on the Celtic calendar.  Ostensibly the feast day of Michael the archangel in the Christian church, in the British Isles the day was celebrated as a harvest festival marking the end of the growing year.  It was a time to celebrate the abundance of the fields and streams before the leaner, colder season shifted the focus from field to forest, from gathering to hunting. Like many harvest festivals, Michaelmas was celebrated with traditional foods.  So if you were a Celt in years gone by, what would have been on your table this evening?  

Instead of a Thanksgiving turkey, you'd be enjoying a stubble goose, a bird fattened on the grain that remained in the fields after the harvest.  And if you were too poor to buy a goose for yourself, never fear.  Chances are you'd be given a goose in payment for services from the local lord or food would be shared with you from the community.  To soak up your goose juice, you'd have a slice of struan, a bread made from the grains harvested from those same fields that fattened your goose.  If you lived in Ireland, your struan would be a yeast bread, baked in the oven.  In Scotland, you'd have a slice of bannock (unleavened bread) cooked on a griddle. The ingredients of your struan would depend upon what grains you grew, usually some combination of oats,barley, rye, wheat or maybe even corn. 

If you lived in the Hebrides you'd also get one of your five-a-day with a healthy serving of carrots. The Sunday before Michaelmas, the women would take a three prong tool (designed to look like the trident of St. Michael) into the field and dig up the wild carrots, tying them with a triple strand of red thread keeping them covered with sand until time for cooking.  If fruit is more your thing, there would be apples from the beginning of the apple harvest and the end of the season's blackberries. According to legend, when Michael threw Satan out of heaven, the deposed angel landed in a blackberry bush and from then on has "spit on the blackberries" on the feast of St. Michael, making fruit gathered after September 29 unpalatable.  

No matter what was on your plate, however, Michaelmas was an opportunity to not only offer blessings for the harvest and all that helped bring it to fruition, but also a time to share that bounty with those less fortunate in the community.  So no matter what is on your plate this evening . . . be it stubble goose or KFC, take a moment to remember all those who made your food possible and all those whose plates are empty.

From a Celtic Blessing for Michaelmas
O Michael the victorious,
     Jewel of my heart,
     O Michael the victorious,
     God's shepherd thou art.
Be the sacred Three of Glory
Aye at peace with me,
With my horses, with my cattle,
With my woolly sheep in flocks.
With the crops growing in the field
Or ripening in the sheaf,
On the machair, on the moor,
In cole, in heap, or stack.
     Every thing on high or low,
     Every furnishing and flock,
     Belong to the holy Triune of glory,
     And to Michael the victorious.

This Week on the Celtic Calendar . . . Lughnasadh

August 1 marks the beginning of the harvest season on the Celtic calendar.  Traditionally, Lughnasadh was celebrated mid-way between the Summer solstice and the Autumn equinox.  Like harvest festivals in many cultures, it was a time to celebrate the abundance of the land while bearing in mind that leaner times were soon to follow.  In the  Christian tradition, Lughnasadh was known as Lammas, derived from the old English word for half-loaf and the custom of taking half a loaf of bread baked from the first harvest to the church for consecration.  Whether celebrating Lughnasadh or Lammas, this is the time of year to practice gratitude for the abundance of the land while being mindful of the times and places of scarcity.

This Week on the Celtic Calendar: Ordinary Time

Ordinary time. It's that season on the church calendar between Pentecost and Advent when nothing much is going on. No feasting or fasting. No preparation or celebration. Liturgical life is just . . . ordinary.  

Daily life, however, is another story. Rarely are our lives just ordinary. The human condition seems to swing back and forth between activity and rest, strife and peace, sorrow and joy. It's a rhythm we see mirrored in the landscape around us, in the turning of the seasons, in the turning of the tide.

Perhaps that's why the concept of ebb and flow features so strongly in Celtic spirituality. Nature, that first book of revelation, reminds us that what is ordinary is change, movement.  

The tide comes in, the tide goes out. The lesson for us in ordinary time is to learn to live in the moment and go with the flow.