What I remember

On the eve of Imbolc, I feel like my candle is unlit.  

 

At this time of year, I long for a sense of kindling. A feeling that the world is inviting me. But all is quiet.

 

The Northern winter is long; a test, really. It tests our patience as we wait for the world to unfold in its own time. It tests our belief that from the grayness we, too, can rise green and new, like the eternal springtime.

 

When we see only the cloud-thick skies of winter, we cannot notice how the light is growing. 

From our rooms, we cannot notice how the Bald Eagle and Great Horned Owl already nest in the tallest white pines and cottonwoods. 

 

But, seen or unseen, we know that Earth manifests all in its right time. Including our Selves.

 

A sacred sun burns deep inside each of us. So I believe. Some call it spirit, or divinity, or life force.

Sometimes we feel the flames leaping. Other times, it may burn so quietly. And in the depths of a winter of the soul, we may worry that the fire has flickered out. 

 

We may not know that slow, quiet transformations are happening within us, which cannot be measured. Or understand how to unravel the messages we send ourselves in dreams, or synchronicities, or patterns. 

We may hear a voice saying that perhaps we are too old, or too worn out, to be renewed; that our story has somehow ended, without our even being aware of it.

 

But then we are reminded. Are we not made of this constantly renewing Earth? Yes. Of the same essence as the clouds, the crow, the ice, the snow. 

 

We know then that our lives are not small, but enormous … shapeshifting, unfolding, flaming, throwing light all around us. Ever-renewing.

 

This is what Imbolc helps me to remember. 

The cauldron of remaking

When a person asks me what I am doing, now that I have left paid work behind, I'll usually say something straightforward. Like, "I'm doing more gardening," or "I'm reading more books," or "I'm spending more time in nature." 

But underneath it all, I think I am really trying to change my relationship with time. To feel it is at last enough. To live in the present moment more often. To slowly reconfigure my inner constellations so that they once again make sense to me. 

I feel a sense of trying to emerge, as if from a long sleep or captivity. 

If my work life prompted a long hibernation of the soul — because my job never called for soul, just "deliverables" — then how do I reawaken this wellspring of vitality, passion and intuition? Is she still there? 

I see her, my spirit, in my mind's eye. In a clearing, deep in an oak wood, owl on her shoulder and crown of leaves upon her head. She stirs the cauldron. She feeds the fire, she keeps the moon in a drawer. She is wise beyond reckoning. 

I call to her: Be with me, be around me, be within me!

It is difficult to hold space for the unmaking necessary before the rebirth. Difficult to feel like enough without doing. I spent many hours in the garden when the sun was high, planting, tending, watering. 

But the winter, I tell myself, is the time to stop struggling toward the sunlight. Let my inauthentic life die. Stop doing to justify my being. Let go of. Listen for whispers. Descend into the darkness of that cauldron, and be stirred.