Spring is my favourite season. Watching the willow in my back yard pop fuzzy buds delights me. I get giddy noticing my perennials sprout through the still-cold dirt. A couple of shrubs near my deck flower profusely, yet briefly, soon after the snow melts.
But we are not there yet.
In the second week of February, the giddiness of spring for my part of the world is still at least three months away. It feels like promise held just out of reach. Even though my rational mind knows better, my heart feels like the cold will last forever.
This is where St. Brigid (remember her from last week’s post?) brings both comfort and hope.
For one thing, Brigid of Kildare is remembered for the care she brought to women and children in distress. Why were they in distress? The men in their lives viewed them as chattel, recognized them as having value only insomuch as they contributed to the comfort and wealth of the husband, father, or landowner. Brigid saw the value of the forgotten ones, and honoured their worth with compassionate attention.
I like to think that if Brigid of Kildare lived near me, she might stop in for tea to help me remember that February isn’t all there is to the cycle of the year, that there is companionship and comfort to be had, even as the winter continues.
The Celtic goddess Brigid is considered the one who awakens the dormant earth and its hibernating creatures. She is associated with the first flowers of spring, and the early births of the flocks and herds. In Ireland February often does bring these visible signs of the warming of the land.
Where I live, there are is likely still more snow to shovel and more weeks of frigid temperatures. Yet Brigid’s stories remind me that deep beneath the snow and frozen ground, spring’s energy is beginning to stir. I am reminded of the quote by Arundahti Roy, “Another world is possible. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”
This is Brigid’s gift to me—the reminder to listen.
What I hear and sense in the dark and cold of February isn’t loud or dramatic. It’s more like the soft whoosh of my cross country skis when I finally find the rhythm of arms and legs that propels me forward smoothly. My efforts to find that rhythm have the benefit of entertaining my much more coordinated husband. And therein is a another reminder: this is a season of gentleness and not taking myself too seriously. It’s also a season of welcoming joy wherever I can find it.
This is the season of subtle stirring … and of cultivating the inner stillness to feel and hear it.
This is where creativity begins.
Capitalism has trained us to think of creativity in terms of completed projects, saleable products, and fully realized objectives. This is why so many of us claim to “not be creative”. We don’t produce anything with a price tag.
Brigid reminds us that creativity is a seed. It’s a force that is ever at work in the earth, and in each of us as humans, and begins in the smallest of ways.
It starts with
“I wonder what would happen if I swapped this ingredient for that one in this recipe.”
“It would be fun to learn woodworking (or salsa dancing or some other craft or skill).”
“How would the room look if I changed the angle of this chair?”
Creativity begins with tiny things, a sense of “I’d like to try …” and the playfulness to follow through.
Play is what gets me through February—cookie baking, Lego building, quilt making, taking pictures of sunrises and sunsets, moving my body to music I love. Play is one of the ways in which I offer companionship to my own self, allowing myself to explore something for its own sake, rather than because it produces a specific result. It’s how I tend the subtle beginnings of the movement of life that wants to speak through me.
Next week, I will introduce you to the ways in which I continue to tend these tiny whispers so they can grow into visible expressions of something new.
In the meantime, what subtle stirring do you feel when you turn your attention inward? What possibility is whispering to you today?
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