still going to L'Arche Ottawa for retreats, conversations, and encounters in community. And we were still travelling to Brooklyn to visit with children and grandchildren. The very day before Massachusetts locked-down, we celebrated our daughter's birthday at a great local Mexican eatery, too. We had worshipped with our loved ones at Trinity Church in NYC, feasted with other loved ones in thanksgiving for her birth, and made St. Brigid's crosses for our thresholds just because. And then... it was apocalypse now!
So much has shifted in nearly a year: so much time in solitude, so much longing and heartache, so much death and grief, so much time in nature, so much political drama, and so many prayers. Oh my Lord, so many prayers. A year ago today (oh, does that ever sound like the start of an old Mothers of Invention song?)
... I had never Zoomed. Or shared anything live-streaming on FB. And now it is SOP. I am still woefully low tech (as you'll see below) but I prefer to call it "old school." I suppose it is time to up my game with technology although I prefer to give my time to writing, revision, and content. Here's my latest "Small Is Holy" live-streaming that rings in a new cycle after my first nearly 52 week streak of reflections, poems, prayers, and songs.
Candidly, who knew this would still be on-going? Not I for certain! And yet it has become a place of connection for some of us even as we commit to more solitude in solidarity. Last year at this time, when the silence and isolation of the contagion was novel, I found myself encouraging friends to take in the beauty and serenity of Mother Nature. Not only is there solace in the woods and streams, there is a quiet sacred witness, too: winter is not forever. Spring is just around the corner.
During that year, I refashioned our kitchen, repainted two bathrooms, built and rebuilt raised bed platforms for a terraced garden, chopped and hauled wood, rebuilt much of the back deck - and now the front deck, too - shared spiritual reflections with my community of L'Arche Ottawa on Zoom, celebrated prayers and Eucharist on my FB live-streaming gig "Small is Holy," collaborated with a local poet on an experiment in voice, music, and photography, visited with loved ones virtually and eventually in public, worked my way through most of Michael Connelly's "Bosch" detective novels, studied a variety of scholars re: Celtic spirituality, and grown closer to both Di and Lucie.
This is the time of pregnancy and the stirring of new life in seeds and creatures. Another name for the feast day of Imbolc on February 1-2 is Oimelc which means "milk of the ewes," for this was the lambing season in the Celtic world.
A prayer from the former days dedicated to St. Brigid at the End of Winter hints at what is to come as north country slowly shifts into spring.
Radiant flame of gold,
Sweet foster-mother of Christ,
I call you name:
Let not death come to my house at winter's end.
Let us not be harried and hungry.
You will not let me be put into a cell.
You will not let me be wounded.
You will not let me fall into forgetfulness of Christ.
You are my gentle foster-mother.
You bring new life at winter's end.
I am sick in my heart;
Winter lingers in my bones.
As you did help bring Jesus from Mary's womb,
Bring new life from me.
I am winter-bare, without gold or corn or cows.
Aid me, O Brigid! Great is my winter need.
Bring springtime to the land.
Bring springtime to my heart.
As a bit of a joke, at first, and then as an act of defiance as the contagion deepened into summer and then fall last year, I steadfastly chose NOT to cut my hair. With, perhaps, another nine months of waiting in various degrees of solitude to go I shall rival the mane of the late Leon Russell by the time its over.
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