The beginning of this little month is so full of power and delight and poetry that I sometimes get to the third day of the month and wonder how there are so many days left.

Our public ritual was Saturday night and Mother Grove Goddess Temple was once again graced with the kind hospitality of the parish hall at All Souls. Such a beautiful place and so perfect for what we do. We are grateful beyond measure for this kindness from these good people.

There were about seventy people in attendance–all kinds of people, which is always the gift of Imbolc and Brigid. It was a long one, too. We are generally finished in about an hour but Saturday included a blessing of and then by our ordinand, ordained only a few hours earlier in a private ceremony in our downtown chapel. There were several strong messages this Imbolc. Community is odd and that’s just how it is–and it is glorious in its oddity. For a couple of years now, I’ve been reminding festival and conference goers that we are the Island of Misfit Toys and that is, in fact, our super-power. The other message was personal as well as communal.

There is always healing to receive and healing to bestow but there must come a time for us when we are healed enough to get on with it. We may need the support and intervention of medicine or counseling or other healing modalities. But we are no longer in a place where we can indulge ourselves if we can indeed get on with the work of heart and hand.

What a daunting prospect! Do I have enough psychic bandaging for those sharp memories? Can a rip my petticoat into cloutie-strips and staunch my emotional bloodletting? When am I using those old wounds as a way to avert my eyes from something I can do to topple patriarchy, to carve a better world, to be who She/They require me to be in the world of the world?