Standing in the Light

The Zen of Snow

It is, just what it is. In the beginning, we are glad to see it, but by February, we are weary of it, and we are ready to see it pass away.

Winter stays around here for several months out of the calendar year, bitter cold making us dance in place to stay warm while out of doors, snow falling and rolling endlessly away from our windows and lenses toward the horizon in great undulating drifts. The long white season mutes skies by day and conceals the moon and stars by night. It wraps village and woodland alike, rounding with equal tenderness and reciprocity, the contours of houses, streets, vehicles, hillsides and sleeping trees.

Rather than trying to tune out all the white stuff this year, I photograph it patiently, playing with the light and looking for the essence of winter - now and then, I encounter that essence in unlikely places.

For just a moment, snow, old wood and desiccated grasses take on the elements of a painting, perhaps one of Andrew Wyeth's exquisite winter scenes, and what I see in the viewfinder leaves me breathless. As mundane as such compositions always seem to be at first glance, they hold the whole world in their delicate shadings and curves, graceful acknowledgments of the suchness of all things.

By Winter's Sun Revealed

Friday Ramble - Winter Gathering

The word abundance made its first appearance in the fourteenth century, coming to us through the good offices of the Middle English and Old French, thence the Latin abundāns, meaning overflowing. The adjective form is abundant, and synonyms for it include:ample, plentiful; copious; plenteous; exuberant; overflowing; rich; teeming; profuse; bountiful and liberal.

It's a word we use to describe circumstances of fullness, ripeness and plenty, a word which was in lavish use in summer and early autumn as we weeded and reaped and gathered in, turning the earth over for next year's garden, "putting things by" and storing the bounty of summer in our larders. Like squirrels, we scurried about and hoarded the fruits of our planting and harvesting for winter, for the short days when the wind howls in the eaves and snow lies deep and white and billowing across the landscape.

Winter's eye is as passionate as summer's eye, but it views the world in a different way, watching not for the shapes of wildflowers and butterflies, but for the graceful arch of bare branches against the clouds, for light falling across old rail fences and making sharp deep blue shadows on the snow, for dead leaves dancing in the wind, and the thousand and one worlds resting easy within a glossy icicle down by the frozen creek. There are bales of hay in the fields too, but they are cloaked in snow, and if not quite forlorn, they are poignant in their silent windswept places.

Winter is about harvest and abundance too, but an inward harvesting and a quieter abundance, questions, questions, questions..... At the end of February I always seem to find myself questioning the shape of my journey so far - the progress through this world with camera and notebook in hand, the images captured or described, even the eyes with which this old hen is seeing the world.

Such questions are part of the journey and the harvest too. There is not the slightest chance that I shall ever capture even a scrap of all this wonder and grandeur around me, and lo, these days on the earth are numbered. In the warm darkness of my uncertainty, I gather them in and rejoice.

Thursday Poem - Mind Wanting More

Only a beige slat of sun
above the horizon, like a shade pulled
not quite down. Otherwise,
clouds. Sea rippled here and
there. Birds reluctant to fly.
The mind wants a shaft of sun to
stir the grey porridge of clouds,
an osprey to stitch sea to sky
with its barred wings, some dramatic
music: a symphony, perhaps
a Chinese gong.

But the mind always
wants more than it has --
one more bright day of sun,
one more clear night in bed
with the moon; one more hour
to get the words right; one
more chance for the heart in hiding
to emerge from its thicket
in dried grasses -- as if this quiet day
with its tentative light weren't enough,
as if joy weren't strewn all around.

Holly Hughes
from American Zen: A Gathering of Poets

Wordless Wednesday - Still Flowing

Sunlight Cafe

Another icy morning, and a deep bitter cold that goes right to the bones and threatens to ossify one's whole metabolism - or rather those parts not already freeze dried by Lady Winter. The situation is underwhelming, and I am not alone in my feelings. When I tried to entice Spencer into going out a few minutes ago, he gave me a filthy look, turned his back on the door and trotted back to bed.

What to do? On days like this one, faraway spices and exotic concoctions go dancing through one's sconce, and the fix is a nice long sit, frothy cappuccino in a bright mug and a stack of favorite cookbooks nearby. This morning's selection includes the books below, but there are bound to be a few others added to the pile before I plunk myself down to ponder and scheme. Here is a koan of sorts.... How many cookbooks can one female read at a go? Does it matter?

Hot Sour Salty Sweet, Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid
Mangoes and Curry Leaves, Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid
he Seductions of Rice, Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid
Beyond the Great Wall, Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid
The Complete Tassajara Cookbook, Edward Espe Brown
Nourishing Traditions, Sally Fallon
Sunlight Cafe, Mollie Katzen
The Greens Cookbook, Deborah Madison
Savory Ways, Deborah Madison
Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, Deborah Madison
Full Moon Feasts, Jessica Prentice
Everyday Greens, Annie Somerville
Fields of Greens, Annie Somerville

Into the kitchen a little later today, and I feel a good Aloo Gobi, coming upon me. Filled with color and redolent of spices, it evokes sunlight and warmer climes, the perfect dish for a bitterly cold day when one can't run around outside with the camera, and even the dog refuses to go out.

River Tangle

A tangle of reed and snow, and somewhere below them, ice and cold clear waters running free.

When Spencer and I stopped on the bank of the river to look yesterday, the hidden river below the tangle was singing, and icicles suspended from nearby trees provided the percussion. The trees and telephone wires overhead formed a vast Aeolian harp, the north wind playing its chosen instrument like a virtuoso. There were wild musics everywhere we turned.

Standing Firm

February's Hunger Moon

Across the velvet bowl of night,
we hunt the rising moon,
with brushes and lenses we go,
longing to catch her radiant face
in the net of dreaming trees.

The Moonhunters (excerpt)
C. Kerr, February 2009

On clear winter nights, the stars are so bright and close one can almost reach up and touch them. Usually the second moon of the calendar year, February's full orb is a cold and perfect beauty up there in the inky night attended by guardian stars and delicate feathery snow clouds. Photographing this moon is a cold business indeed, so what am I doing outside with camera and tripod after dark?

Around this time, the Great Horned Owl (Bubo virginianus), having taken a mate a few weeks earlier, crafts a nest and settles down to the happy business of raising an unruly brood. The great hornies are among my favorite birds, and I adore their soft songs - it's always a lovely thing to hear a couple calling companionably to each other across the snowy woods in winter's (hopefully) closing pages. Quintessential northern residents, the great owls love living here and they thrive on the tough climate - the further north one travels, the bigger they grow. The Saw-whet Owl (or sugar bird) will not be far behind the hornies in courtship rituals, and nor will the other owls of the Lanark highlands. Strange as it may seem, springtime is already on its way. Love and fertility are in the air, among the owls anyway.

Life is a little more stressful for those of us who lack feathers and fur and do not dine on mice and voles. The Wolf Moon was last month, but the wolves continue to howl at village gates, and hunger is a beast well known as the days grow longer and winter (hopefully) draws to a close. We count the sticks of firewood in our woodsheds, vegetables in the bins and the jars in our larders, and we hope we can hang on for a while longer. If we can manage to hang on, the full moon of March promises relief and sweetness too, for the splendid wild alchemy of the maple syrup season will be in full swing when the next full moon makes its appearance.

For a fine trove of moon lore and thoughtful observations about the ways in which humanity have traditionally hunted, gathered, cooked and "put things by" for the long nights, read Jessica Prentice's Full Moon Feasts. Her book, subtitled "Food and the Hunger for Connection", follows the thirteen moons of an agricultural year, beginning with this month's Hunger Moon. Each of the thirteen chapters contains recipes which are in tune with the timeless rhythms of the season.

We also know this moon as the: Ash Moon, Big Winter Moon, Bone Moon, Bony Moon, Budding Moon, Chestnuts Moon, Cold Winds Moon, Coyotes Frighten Moon, Crow Moon, Dark Red Calves Moon, Death Moon, Eagle Moon, Fish Running Moon, Frost Sparkling in the Sun Moon, Gray Moon, Horning Moon, Ice in River Is Gone Moon, Ice Moon, Index Finger Moon, Little Bud Moon, Long Dry Moon, Makes Branches Fall in Pieces Moon, Mimosa Moon, Moon of Ice, Moon of Purification and Renewal, Moon of Rabbit Conception, Moon of the Cedar Dust Wind, Moon of the Raccoon, Moon of the Frog, Moon When Geese Come Home, Moon When Bear Cubs are Born, Moon When Spruce Tips Fall, Moon When Trees Pop, Moon When Trees Are Bare and Vegetation Is Scarce, Narcissus Moon, No Snow in Trails Moon, Peach Blossom Moon, Pink Moon, Plum Blossom Moon, Primrose Moon, Quickening Moon, Raccoon Moon, Rain and Dancing Moon , Red and Cleansing Moon, Second Moon, Snow Crust Moon, Snow Moon, Solmonath (Sun Moon), Squint Rock Moon, Staying Home Moon, Storing Moon, Storm Moon, Sucker Fish Moon, Sucker Moon, Trapper’s Moon., Treacherous Moon, Violet Moon, Wexes Moon, Wild Moon, Wind Moon , Wind Tossed Moon, Winter Moon

I am rather fond of Quickening Moon and Wild Moon.

Friday Ramble - Silence

Silence.... the word comes to us through the Old English swige and Old French silence meaning "the absence of sound," thence from the Latin verb silentium meaning "the state of being without sound" and the Latin verb infinitive silere meaning "to be still and/or tranquil". I could have traced the origins of the word all the way back to the beginning times, but found myself halted and wondering at silere, more than a trifle curious about how it all began.

We have always been nourished by notions of stillness and mute tranquility. The stories, songs and tales which are such rich and poignant expressions of our tribal ways are exquisite when we view them in their entirety, but there are other revelations when we begin to look closely at their elements, at the individual words and the spaces between the words. Words and the spaces between them are little works of art or theater, tiny plays or compositions, each descriptive of a feeling or perception, a physical sensation, an encounter, an interaction with other beings or with existence itself.

Silence and mythology are closely interwoven, for the word mythology has its roots in the Greek mythos, meaning to speak or to relate something, and not just in the written or spoken sense. The etymological roots of the word mythology are shared with other words connoting silence, wordlessness and the inability to speak. In other words, what we are not hearing or saying is as important as what we are hearing or saying. Silence is as meaningful and expressive as speech, and sometimes more so. Sometimes, the spaces between the words are as eloquent as the words themselves can ever be. There is a profound causal relationship between what we communicate in words and what we do not (or cannot) communicate in words. All silences are liminal and transforming.

There is the silence between one gust of wind and the next, the still incandescent interval at twilight when the setting sun illuminates a melt pool in the park, turning the water and reflected trees a brilliant gold as one stands nearby open-mouthed. There are the quiet days I write about sometimes — when one can actually hear snow falling among the trees or on the old Buddha on the deck. There is the eloquent space between one bead on a mala or rosary and the next, the space between two words in a tale or narrative — the quiet mindful expanse between the opening chime of the meditation bell and the one which closes our meditations.

Silence is a song, a prayer, a benediction, and there is too little of it in modern life. Sometimes, we need to be able to hear ourselves think — or better still, not think anything at all, just show up and BE there. In our small intentional silences, we dwell (however briefly) in mindfulness and infinite possibility. It's all good, and one of these days, I think I shall put those words on a t-shirt.

Thursday Poem - A Walk

My eyes already touch the sunny hill.
going far ahead of the road I have begun.
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;
it has inner light, even from a distance—

and charges us, even if we do not reach it,
into something else, which, hardly sensing it,
we already are; a gesture waves us on
answering our own wave...
but what we feel is the wind in our faces.

Rainer Maria Rilke
(Translated by Robert Bly)

Wordless Wednesday - Cheerful

Muscovy Duck (Cairina moschata)

Old Roof and Blue Sky

Here we are again in the puckish mercurial month of February, with the weather swinging to and fro like a pendulum from day to day. Yesterday brought rain and mild temperatures; this morning brought clear skies, bitter cold and wind. The magnitude of meteorological change boggles the mind at this time of the year, but perhaps such weatherly doings are to be expected - after all, this is the month of the madcap woodland god, Pan, sometimes called Lupercus or Faunus.

Pan is often depicted as a satyr or faun, the horned and furry deity of shepherds and flocks, wild mountain places, hunting, the shepherd's pipes (Pan flute) and rustic musics, enamored of fair young maidens far and wide. His name hails from the Greek word paein, meaning "to pasture."

In the god's Arcadian birthplace, he was revered as the sacred protector of fields, groves and woodland glens, thence comes his affiliation with fertility rites and springtime. The lusty old guy is a primal spirit from the beginning times, and he never comes to mind without my thinking of the incandescent chapter (VII) in Kenneth Graham's The Wind and the Willows called "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn".

This is the last day of Pan's own rites, the Lupercalia, an ancient pastoral festival celebrated to banish evil spirits and ensure rude health and fertility. The Lupercalia superseded Februa, an earlier Roman spring festival from which the month of February took its name.

In a few weeks, the old barn will be home to the first wee lambs of the season and they will all be gamboling merrily about in northern farm fields. This year, we may have to issue them with parkas and snowshoes.

Heart of Winter

By Leaf Exposed

Little things leave you feeling restless in February. You peruse stacks of gardening catalogues, plotting another heritage rose or three and new plots of herbs and heirloom veggies. You spend hours in the kitchen evoking old Helios with cilantro, fragrant olive oils and concoctions straight from Tuscany. You brew up endless pots of chrysanthemum tea, sunlight dancing in every china mug.

You play with filters, apertures and shutter speeds, entranced (and occasionally profoundly irritated) by the surprising transformations wrought by your madcap gypsy tinkerings. Camera in hand or around your neck, you haunt the woods, peering into trees and searching for a leaf somewhere, even a single bare leaf. You scan the cloudy evening skies, desperately hoping to see the moon, and you calculate the weeks remaining until the geese, the herons and the loons come home again.

The great owls who live on the Two Hundred Acre Wood are now building their nest in an old tree in the forest and getting ready to raise another comely brood, a truly happy thought. This morning, a single delicately faded oak leaf was teased into brief flight by the north wind and wonderful to relate, it came to rest on the veranda, bearing in its poignant wabi sabi simplicity an often and much needed reminder. This is the sisterhood of fur and feather, eye and leaf. Out of such small and frost rimed doings, a mindful life is made.

The Sound of Snow

Friday Ramble - Vision

The word this week is vision, and it comes down to us from the thirteenth century, hailing from the Anglo French visioun, the Old French vision and the Latin visionem, all meaning "the act of seeing", thence the PIE (Proto Indo European) root weid meaning "to know or see". Significant and well known kin words are the Sanskrit veda meaning "to know", the modern English wise and wisdom.

To have a vision may mean simply to witness something or something beautiful, but the word is often used to describe something more: the experience of viewing something in one's imagination or the supernatural, of seeing the future or something happening far away, of being gifted with prophecy.

Now and then in winter, our northern highlands are a grand vision, all blue and rich and intense, and the vision is right there before our eyes, no imagination needed at all. The deep snows are gloriously stained, as if jeroboams, methuselahs and whole barges of peacock blue ink have been poured out over everything and it has all soaked in. Every snow drowned tree in the Lanark hills is a sculpture resembling a cloaked and hooded guardian keeping watch, and from the top of those hills, the world is a boundless magnificent blue vision. It is like standing on the roof of the world - until we remember that trees don't grow that high up in the Himalayas.

So much vivid blue and purple in the landscape seems downright wasteful, wanton and profligate, but it's necessary if we are to survive here in the long white season. Otherwise, we tend to lose our collective marbles and run amok, cultivating a slow simmering defiance, fomenting revolts great and small, giving some thought to splattering public buildings with buckets of red and gold and purple paint. I cheerfully confess that the last idea is tempting.

For all the bluesy affluence beyond the windows, it is bitterly cold and icy here this week. This is not the sort of weather in which one wants to take a chance on wandering around outside and tumbling on the ice which is everywhere under the snow. Safer by far are dazzling blue visions experienced from the windows and gentler revolutions within.

Health issues in this new year have kept me indoors much of the time, but out I go now and again. As I was wandering carefully about yesterday morning, I found myself thinking of Arundhati Roy's words: "Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing." For a few minutes, I could hear (and feel) this beautiful world breathing all around me, and it stopped me right in my tracks.

Thursday Poem - Becoming

Wait for evening.
Then you'll be alone.

Wait for the playground to empty.
Then call out those companions from childhood:

The one who closed his eyes
and pretended to be invisible.
The one to whom you told every secret.
The one who made a world of any hiding place.

And don't forget the one who listened in silence
while you wondered out loud:

Is the universe an empty mirror? A flowering tree?
Is the universe the sleep of a woman?

Wait for the sky's last blue
(the color of your homesickness).

Then you'll know the answer.

Wait for the air's first gold (that color of Amen).
Then you'll spy the wind's barefoot steps.

Then you'll recall that story beginning
with a child who strays in the woods.

The search for him goes on in the growing
shadow of the clock.

And the face behind the clock's face
is not his father's face.

And the hands behind the clock's hands
are not his mother's hands.

All of Time began when you first answered
to the names your mother and father gave you.

Soon, those names will travel with the leaves.
Then, you can trade places with the wind.

Then you'll remember your life
as a book of candles,
each page read by the light of its own burning.

Li-Young Lee

(from Behind My Eyes)

Wordless Wednesday - Winter's Morning Rite

Taking Shelter

Wild Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo)

Canny birds, our local wild turkeys... In winter, they forage in rural fields where the north wind has blown snow away from the corn stubble. They visit farm paddocks where grain is being set out for domestic birds, horses and livestock, and they haunt residential bird feeders from time to time. A few of us put food out for them, and it doesn't take long for flocks to get the message and make their personal smörgåsbord preferences known.

When the weather is truly miserable, wild turkeys find shelter in outlying farm buildings, resting out of the wind and blowing snow until conditions are more favorable for feeding. I should be used to it by now, but I am always surprised to discover a flock roosting in an abandoned log barn somewhere in the highlands. When I do encounter one, the birds stand their ground and stare me down, gimlet eyed.

The really neat thing is that the imperious males (or "jakes") are arrayed in every color of the rainbow when they are in full display. They put on a fine strutting show for any females (or "jennies") in the neighborhood.

Looking Up and Across

What leads one to climb part way up a hill in February and just stand there looking up at the rocks and snow draped trees? What lies at the heart of an impulse to stand out in a field somewhere and contemplate snow, gates and fences on a bitterly cold day in February?

Is it a wild and somewhat melancholy pleasure which arises out viewing wide expanses of rippling snow demarcated by rocks, trees, old rails and pipe gates, nary a building in sight? Is it Zen thoughts of emptiness, the sound of the hollow wind sweeping across the hills and sculpting random waves, billows, figurines and abstract shapes as it passes? Is it the intense colors of the deep shadows which lie over and around everything, a desire for the order and containment represented by old cedar rails and rusty gates? Is it the realms which beckon beyond summits and rude gates?

In winter, the landscape is revealed to a patient wanderer as it is at no other time in the turning year. One can see the undulating shapes of the countryside and and trace the rocky bones with her eyes, feel the land's peaceful slumber and share its slow dreams, sometimes even sense the shape of the springtime to come (although spring seems far away on such a day as this). If one is quiet and observant, there are rainbows of color to be seen in the snow and shadows, and there is music in the wind.

There is no profound reason for this ramble, that I can see anyway. I am here, and that is enough, no reason at all to wonder why.

Afternoon Light

The old barn seen late on a winter afternoon: sunlight and blue skies, deep snow and long sharp shadows across everything. Since most of the structure was in shadow, there was a suggestion of the logs and weathered boards, but it was the light, the battered tin roof and the drifts of snow which held one's attention - and the intense blues everywhere we looked.

Since there were no footsteps crossing the yard, both barn and paddock seemed deserted, but Spencer and I were standing there watching, and there were deer feeding in the cedars beyond the back fence.

Waiting

Friday Ramble - Listen

Friday's word this week is listen. It hails from the Old English hlysnan meaning to hear or hearken, to train one's ears on something. Close kin are the Proto-Germanic khlusinon and the Old High German hlosen meaning the same thing. At the base of it all is the PIE (Proto Indo European) kleu meaning hearing or sound. This is one of those words which seems to have been around forever, or at least since our first ancestors figured out that ears were useful things to have. I stopped at the PIE root here, but I managed to trace this week's word historically through a number of cultures, and in so doing, I discovered just how similar the many forms were.

In the mythic Irish Fenian cycle, the hero Fionn Mac Cumhail asked his followers what they thought the finest music in the world was, and they suggested many things: a cuckoo calling in the hedgerow, the sound of a spear ringing on a shield, the baying of hounds, the laughter of a beautiful girl. Fionn agreed that all of these were good, but the finest of all music, he said, was “the music of what happens.”

How often do we really listen to everyday musics, to what is happening in our lives? A bitterly cold wind cavorts through the gutters of the little blue house in the village this sunny morning, and it goes rushing around corners, whistling a hollow resonant tune that sounds like my battered old Tibetan singing bowl. There is exuberant tinkling and crackling up by the eaves as the resident icicles protest the presence that is trying so hard to bring them down. When they tumble and shatter, the icicles ring like bells against the snow.

I stand outside the back door with morning tea in hand listening to the day, and it seems to me that these early and ordinary morning sounds are almost symphonic in their expression and seemingly effortless orchestration - the silent intervals between the notes are equally poignant, complete and expressive. These moments will never pass my way again, and their myriad sounds are fragile and fleeting. When it snows later in the day, I shall be able to hear the snow falling among the trees and coming to rest on the stones. Such moments are precious beyond words, some of my favorite moments in all of life.

Thursday Poem - Candlemas\ Groundhog Day\ Imbolc

Out of the sun, the snow surprises.
Thin wash of white squalling across the field.

Candlemas, Pope Sergius proclaimed,
will celebrate the Purification of the Virgin..

Unclean from mothering, as any woman,
Mary must be brought to ceremony.

Let her come forth for churching
Let her submit her grace and power.

Broken straw and strong young grass alike
the brush of snow erases.

Groundhog Day. In such an uproar of hope,
this pale little fellow emerges.

Mistaking the messenger for the message,
a crowd of watchers cheers him lustily.

Once it was Imbolc: womb of earth.
A women’s dance around the fertile fire.

Hear the old belly of soil
rumbling with hunger for spring,

It is She, it is still She
whose prophecy surges.

Dolores Stewart Riccio,
from Doors to the Universe
(reprinted here with her kind permission)

Wordless Wednesday - Imbolc Firelight

Imbolc - It's About Light

How difficult it is not to think about light at a time of the year when there is so little of it about. Lemony sunlight slanting through windows at dawn, the moon and stars riding in bitterly cold night skies, crackling firelight on an open hearth, the halo of a sweetly burning beeswax votive - one and all, they draw us like the song of the mythic sirens. No shipwrecks lie at the end of our blithe enticing though, no jagged rocks or sharp and sided hail.

Here we are at the first day of February, and the eve of Imbolc (or Candlemas). Strange to relate, this festival day in the depths of winter celebrates light and warmth, the stirring of green things within the earth, the burgeoning of new life and the beginning of springtime. Once called "Bride's day", tomorrow is consecrated to Brigid, she who is much loved as an Irish saint, but was revered as a goddess long centuries before she was canonized. Brigid is a deity of fire and creativity, of wisdom, eloquence and superb craftsmanship. She is patroness of the forge and the smithy, of poetry and the healing arts, particularly midwifery. Hers are the candle, the hearth and the forge, and light is her special province.

We ourselves are made of light, and so, we are Brigid's true children - creatures spun out of the dust of stars which once lighted the heavens and ceased to exist long ago. Within our cells are encoded the wisdom of the ancient earth and all its cultures, the star knowledge of unknown constellations and "The Big Bang" which created not just our own precious world, but the whole cosmic sea in which it floats.

The stardust of which we are made is essentially recycled matter, having assembled spontaneously into diverse life forms over and over again, lived and expired as those life forms, then dissolved back into the stream of being. In our time, “we” have been many things, worn many shapes and answered to many names. In this lifetime I exist as a tatterdemalion, specific and perhaps unique collection of wandering molecules called Catherine or Cate, but in previous appearances I was someone or something altogether different. Buddhist teacher, thinker, activist and deep ecologist Joanna Macy likes to say that since every particle in our being goes back to the first flaring of space and time, we are as old as the universe itself, about 15 billion years. In other words, we are the universe, and it is us.

Here is the light-filled Blessing for Hearth-Keepers from The Little Book of Celtic Blessings by Caitlin Matthews. I recite it every year on the eve of Imbolc as I light candles and build a fire in the old fireplace. Merry Imbolc to you and your clan. Happy Candlemas and Happy Brigid's Day too. May the blessings of Light be yours.

Brighid of the Mantle, encompass us,
Lady of the Lambs, protect us,
Keeper of the Hearth, kindle us.
Beneath your mantle, gather us,
And restore us to memory.
Mothers of our mother,
Foremothers strong.
Guide our hands in yours,
Remind us how
To kindle the hearth.
To keep it bright,
To preserve the flame.
Your hands upon ours,
Our hands within yours,
To kindle the light,
Both day and night.
The Mantle of Brighid about us,
The Memory of Brighid within us,
The Protection of Brighid keeping us
From harm, from ignorance, from heartlessness.
This day and night,
From dawn till dark,
From dark till dawn