Have you ever been in an old growth forest? I would love to hear your stories. I’m working on one. There is a feeling of ancient power and deep peace there, a relief from the measured order of civilization in the divine sense of the wilderness. When the strong winds blow the ancient stories are loosed from the topmost branches all the way down to the roots of the great trees, and we can hear their songs of experience and wisdom.

Feb.1 Imbolc, the feast day of Brigit, the first day of spring according to the pagan calendar. Before she was a saint, Brigit was “a typical feminine trinity. Brigit ruled; her two sisters governed the arts of healing and smithcraft…Brigit the female sage…Brigit the goddess, whom poets adored, because her protecting care over them  was very great and very famous…She had a female priesthood…(who)kept an ever-burning sacred fire…The number of Brigit’s priestesses at Kildare was 19, representing the 19 year cycle of the Celtic “Great Year.”  Greeks said the sun god of the north, whom they called Hyperborean Apollo, visited the northern “temple of the moon goddess” once every 19 years, a mythic expression of the coincidence of solar and lunar calendars. In reality the period of coincidence was 18.61 years, which meant the smallest regular unit to give a “mating” of sun and moon was 56 years, two cycles of 19 and one of 18. This astronomical data was well known to the builders of Stonehenge, who marked the span of Great Years with posts around their circle…Brigit was older than Celtic Ireland, having come with Gaelic Celts from their original home in Galatia…flowers and shamrocks sprang up in Brigit’s footprints; eternal spring reigned in her bower. Irish writers refused to reduce their Goddess to mere sainthood, and insisted that she was Queen of Heaven.” from Barbara Walker’s “The Women’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets”

In preparation for the longest night of the year, I surrendered to the rest and relief and quiet and beauty of the darkness, where the forest becomes a place of dreaming and awakening happens in sleep. Love is the light in the darkness. Though the nights are still long, I know the sun is returning and I am waking up.

“Did you know I was sitting on the moon this night-I fished so much stars.” Liliana, age 4 and a half