When do you think Spring starts? Is it the Vernal Equinox, March 21st, one of the two mid points between Winter and Summer solstice? Is it March 1st, the beginning of the second season in the Meteorological record keeping system? Or (if you are ancient Celtic inclined) is it around the beginning of February which marks Groundhog day (how much more winter still to come?), St. Brigid feast day (and a few other major saints), the Presentation of Jesus at the temple, Candlemas (blessing of candles for use by the church and at home), and Imbolc, the point midway between Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox?
You don’t know Imbolc? Imbolc is the pre-Christian Celtic fest day of Spring’s beginning. While it is tied to the mid-point between Winter Solstice and Vernal Equinox, it is also tied to the beginning of the lambing season and so can drift by a couple of weeks in either direction. The lambs make the season.
As a teen-ager, Spring actually started with the first sight of crocuses and daffodils on my way to and from school in the rainy, wet, cold Pacific Northwest winter. Those hope giving little pokes of new green leaves and stems showed up thankfully in early February. As a suburban girl, I didn’t know about sheep but I did have those little fragile bits of white, purple, and yellow colors promising more to come.
Imbolc, baby lambs, and those first bits of flower colors announce Spring’s beginnings around the first of February which is crazy talk. We all know that February is the heartbreak month, the month where it is still cold and wet and probably snowy but maybe not but certainly gray and foggy and really a a whole year of endurance wrapped up in a month and all your sweaters are just sad and a little too often worn between washings. And this February, the second of the Covid experience, is even more dis-heartening. Quite frankly, everything is still upside down and infused with grief. We’re all just done with the whole thing and we want to see our friends, family, and a good movie at the local cinema. We are really feeling winter’s heaviness right now.
This is also a very busy day in the liturgical calendar, at least if you follow the Feast and Quiet days. In addition to being the festival of St. Brigid and a few dozen other saints, it is the day of the presentation of Jesus in the Temple. Simeon and Anna have been waiting for decades in the temple in the second chapter of Luke. They’ve been waiting to see God’s new change in the world and then one day – surprise! – who gets carried but Baby Jesus, presumably still as helpless as any other newborn child (or lamb) in this world. Change is now. Simeon and Anna see it immediately, even though there are even more decades till change begins to take shape. Still, it is on that particular day when they sensed something in that specific baby even though it must have looked like almost every other baby in the temple that afternoon.
They sensed the promise.
Over time, these set of days have attracted several significant Christian feast days, religious traditional practices ranging from blessing candles for use in the home and church to elaborate pilgrimages around the village calling to invite St. Brigid into the homes, to reading the story of persistent vigils for the arrival of change. These days have been called “Thin days”, a time when the barrier between the holy and the ordinary eases and one senses the other close at hand. Perhaps, if we stand still for a few moments, we can feel the gathering of the energy that is about to burst out into green growing things. Perhaps we can feel Spring’s beginnings, still hidden from view but starting to express the energy none the less.
What are we waiting for?
What changes are we hoping for?
What growth are we starting to sense around us and within us?
What fulfillment of promises are we starting to sense?
Remember? God does not abandon.
Remember? God keeps God’s promises.
Also, just a thought, maybe consider if it is time to take those sweaters to the dry cleaners sometime soon? St. Brigid may or may not be on her way over to bless the house and your fabrics with healing grace. Even if she isn’t, it could be a nice gift of self care to air some of the textiles out.