Merry Imbolc

This is the invitation I sent out by email today:

Dear friends - You are warmly invited to join Adonis and me for our somewhat-annual Imbolc gathering, Saturday evening at 7:30 at our house. Imbolc (also called Brigid, St. Brigit's Day, or Candlemas) is the Pagan midwinter holiday celebrating fire, poetry, inspiration, creativity, smithcraft, lambing, the hearth, the sacred well, etc. We'll have food and drink and a fire in the fireplace. Please bring a poem to read aloud. (For those who haven't attended before, we won't force you to read aloud, but I promise that it's more fun than it may sound.)

Partners and children most welcome.

In the past we've had poems read by adults and children, by published poets and rank amateurs like me, in Yiddish, Russian, and Icelandic. The first year, I asked people also to come dressed as poets, however they might interpret that request. There were black turtlenecks and berets, flowing peasant shirts and beads, and I can't remember what else; one guest came dressed as Percy Shelley, complete with a copy of Godwin's Enquiry Concerning Human Justice tucked under her arm and seaweed wrapped around her torso (Shelly drowned before he could turn 30).

Since this is also a day for making pledges, I've been thinking and writing about intentions for the next year and a day. Events of the last week have shown me clearly how much I want a house of my own and to adopt more pit bulls. I've also been meditating on this passage from Barbara Brennan's Hands of Light.

What is your thirst? What is your longing? Whatever it is, it will carry you to what you need to do next to accomplish your work, even if you don't know what that work is yet. When a thing is easily presented to you, and it sounds wonderful to you and a great deal of fun, by all means do it. That is guidance. Let yourself flow free with the dance of your life.

Or, as a wise person once said, The things that make us happy make us wise.

Blessings of heat and inspiration on this sacred day.