When to honor the cross quarters..

Today is the day when Wiccans honor the Goddess Brighid, today is the traditional day for Imbolc. It's funny to use the word traditional with a religion that was born in the 1960's. Like the last 40 yrs of Wicca have accelerated our work such that anything can be referred to as a tradition? I'm not sure.

Something that has challenged me since the beginning of my studies has been the cross quarter Sabbats. We read in many books how they are honored on X day, yet when you research what makes them cross-quarters, it's the fact that they happen 45 days from a solstice or an equinox. Uhm... but the traditional days are not always 45 days from a solstice or an equinox.

So I started counting. And I noticed that more often the cross quarters happen near a lunar event that is +-4 days from the 45 day mark. Thus, my coven and I started honoring the cross quarters on those days. Why? Because it felt more real to me than to just honor a day because someone chose it? It's hard to provide a reason for doing something in Wicca that is any more solid than any other reason. Wicca is such a new religion that compared to other religions of the world, it feels a little silly to make bold statements like "this is the traditional way of doing things." Traditional? So in the past 40 yrs there haven't been a dozen or so authors and community leaders who haven't found faults with any number of our "traditions" and modified them to suit their needs?

45 days, February 2nd, the next lunar event... there is no more justification for any of one those times to honor Brighid than any other. I like to think that the Goddess weaves her visions from a loving and creative source, and as such isn't all that upset if it's one day or the next, just as long as it happens sometime when the community feels it should.

Common sense plays a role here as well: if you want to hold a large celebration, and most of your coven members work, then they either have to take the day off... or you have to schedule it on or near a weekend so that everyone can relax and enjoy the time spent in celebration of Brighid's fire.

The overall goal of this Sabbat is to honor Brighid, the rising of the God's fires (the sun's warmth), and to gather together in a celebration of light to soothe the pyschological damages of a long, dark winter. When those things are accomplished with a deep emotional commitment, the day upon which the ritual occurs becomes less of an issue.

Love and writing, or is it rockets?

Echoes of laughter and tears bounce off of the images that fade as the coffee cools in front of me. Deep felt emotions zing through me and fly off into the dark sky of a cold morning. Quiet.

There are those times, you know them, that come more and more often as you grow older... when you are more connected to the world around you in a moment than you feel you ever have been. In that moment you are part of the time and space right around you, like a tree or a bird you are no longer human and tangled up in the unneeded complexity of what should be, you just are.

In those moments it seems so normal to just be what you are and create whatever you want to create, doesn't it? In those moments I am a writer, and I write whatever the universe wants created in that moment. A beautiful stream of images and emotions floods my mind and heart and words appear, banging on the inside of my eyes and crying to get out. Yet as soon as they hit the page their life seems to fade like a shooting star. I often wonder what the Gods had in mind when they made me a writer. I feel as though everyday is wasted that I don't write.. and yet there are so many days that go by without writing.
The reverie is broken by something loud usually.. usually kids or dogs who don't see the magnificent bubble of magick that I think is so obviously floating around me. They probably see my state of being as normal and wonder why I think it's so special!

Either way, I am left deflated and cold in that moment. The soap bubble of zen unity with the cosmic consciousness is broken and I'm just a mother, a wife, a manager, and a priestess again.. no longer am I the incarnation of the Gods writing to keep up with their inspirational song.

Laying there on the floor, flattened like Flat Stanley, I quietly wonder to myself if all artists endure this kind of cold, shocking ejection into the mundane world? And do they feel just as pathetic and one-dimensional when it happens as I do?

That entire experience is why I can't imagine writing for a living even though I know it's what the Gods want of me. I can't imagine ever having writing bringing the mundane into my awareness, only other things. Writing is sacred to me, and as such should be free. I will learn to integrate the freedom with the creative cycle and grow a new perspective in the coming years, but I felt it important to log where I am now --> Kind of a " YOU ARE HERE" thing that allows me to take ownership of my fears and therefore use them to organically grow a new point of view.

Inspired by a friend's lessons from Brighid, I am honoring the darkness that a seed lives in for months before it germinates. We are in darkness now.. and I'm planting a seed.