Imbolc Imbolc Moon
Imbolc, as long time readers of this blog probably recall, means in the belly. This cross-quarter holiday comes between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox. It lies at the most desperate point of the year for an agricultural culture with no refrigeration. If it was a good harvest before the beginning of the fallow season at Samain, all right; but, if it was a poor or even mediocre harvest, then supplies might be running out.
This might mean awful choices must be made. Do you eat the seed grain, which you need to plant next year’s crop? Do you slaughter an animal which you need to breed, because you can’t feed it and your family?
A potential salvation lay in the sheep. The ewes, now pregnant, a lamb in-the-belly, would begin to freshen, produce milk, a source of nourishment that might be enough to get the family, the village, through until spring. Even in good years the freshening of the ewes was a time of celebration. It meant the fallow time was drawing to a close. Spring was near and the growing season would commence.
The Great Wheel turns. The sabbath for the land continues through Imbolc, awaiting the warmer temperatures and rains around the equinox.
An interesting annual spiritual practice I found at Heron’s Rook, but could not relocate even after searching there, begins at Samain. Heron, the witch who writes this blog, calls the annual focus, the great work. I’m going to reimagine it here. The general idea is hers, but the specifics are as I vaguely remember them or as my reimagining suggests they could be.
We go fallow at Samain, too, letting the last year’s work feed us as we consider what might make for a good crop in the coming year. On the Winter Solstice go deep into your own darkness, celebrate what roots in your soul, what is even now gathering nourishment from the soil of your inner garden.
On Imbolc, where we are right now, let the spiritual or creative elements of that which grows within you come to the surface, give you sustenance as you await the fullness of its birth.What you await is a purpose, a project, a great work strong enough to sustain focused energy over the growing season or several seasons. At Imbolc it’s still nascent, unformed, perhaps unrecognizable as what it will become. But its growth has already begun to feed you.
Around the vernal equinox let it out, bring it into the sunlight of the new spring. Let it gambol in the fields of your heart. Feed it. Embrace its newborn animal nature. You might see it as a puppy or a kitten, a lamb. It’s new in the world and must be fed, but just as much as physical needs it has a need to explore, to greet the new world in which it now lives.
This is the moment to run like crazy with that potential new work, examine all the ways it can go, let it loose. See what it needs to explore, to learn. By Beltane, the beginning of the growing season, you will know the skeletal structure of your new work. You will have followed its maturation from the dark of the Winter Solstice through its puppy like eagerness, to the now formed project or direction.
Over the course of the growing season you will give this great work for the year what it needs to thrive. Plenty of sunshine, water. You’ll weed around it. Provide it food. If its completion coincides with Samain, then the process will begin again.
As I wrote this, I realized that for me, I’d probably flip it. That is, I’d start the incubation process at Beltane, let the new great work grow over the Summer Solstice, let its creative energy begin to emerge around Lughnasa, bring it into the world around Mabon, or the fall equinox, and get down to serious work on it at Samain. This is because I find the cold and the bleakness of the fallow time most conducive to creative work.
An interesting idea, I think.
The Imbolc moon has had its night in earth’s shadow, its night as super and blue and red. Hey, up in the sky, it’s Supermoon! And last night it was wonderful again. High, full, behind a faint veil of clouds. Orion and the moon. My two favorite celestial objects. Well, ok, the sun, too, but I can never look at it.
Last night I went back to Beth Evergreen, more kabbalah. Studying the kabbalah at night, especially under a full moon. Yes. Learning about more double letters: Pey, Caph, Reish, Tav.
Being part of the tribe? No. Not for me. Walking along with the tribe as it wends its way through this moment in time? Yes.
Instead of watching the state of the union Kate and I participated in a presentation on green burial and the possibility of creating a green cemetery. Beth Evergreen has been moving, slowly, toward a Jewish cemetery over the last six years, but Bonnie Houghton, a rabbi in training and former long time Forest Service employee has accelerated the process through her own efforts. In her current work with the Mountain Land Trust she sees properties presented for conservation easements. Some don’t qualify for that purpose, but would work well for green cemeteries, where burials eschew vaults, fancy caskets and backhoes for hand-dug graves, wicker/pine/cardboard/shroud coverings for the corpse, and small, usually flush with the ground grave markers.
I found this conversation oddly energizing. Something about the cliched final resting place has more resonance as I move toward my 71st birthday. Having a cemetery which celebrates the natural order of life and death with decay rather than chemicals, concrete, and metal makes so much sense to me. Having a tree planted over my cremains, or in them, feels right. Too, we could bury the remains of our many dogs with us. That would make for a unique family plot.
Sandy, our house cleaner, who is about to have brain surgery for a second time on the 20th of this month, got her quilt Kate made her yesterday. She’s a strong woman and she’s had a very, very tough year. Unfortunately, the tumor did not debulk as they had hoped after the first surgery. It’s benign, but large. The aftermath of the surgery is awful. Disorientation. Nausea. Headaches. And these last a while. A quilt is such a great gift in this situation, since a lot of time in bed is part of the recovery. Covered in love.
Hippity hop to the ortho shop. Kate’s got an appointment at Panorama Orthopedics today. Her right shoulder. She can no longer hold things up with her right arm and has to use two hands to put dishes away, sometimes to lift a cup. Annoying and painful. Screws up her sleep, too. She needs some kind of solution, more than likely a shoulder replacement. This is the first step, a consult to see what her options are.
An interesting week ahead. A session on green burial tomorrow night at CBE. It’s part of a conversation about creating a Jewish cemetery up here in the Evergreen/Conifer area. Oddly, I think I’d like to work on that. The next night, Wednesday, is Tu B’Shevat, the New Year of the Trees. Judaism has a lot of pagan inflections, Tu B’Shevat and Sukkot, a harvest festival at the end of the High Holidays, for example. Looking forward to this one because there’s a seder, too, with seven species of fruit and nuts. I’ll explain more on Wednesday. After the this celebration is another Kabbalah session, more double letters in the Hebrew alphabet.
Rigel has her second appointment at the Vet Referral Clinic with Dr. Bayliss this Friday, too. I’m excited about it because we’ll get a clearer picture of what’s going on with her. And, it’s not the dire prognosis we anticipated when we took her in a week ago last Friday.
Kate sewed most of the day yesterday. May not seem like a big deal, but it is. Her energy and her energy management skills are both improving and she’s enjoying life more. I’m so glad to see it.
Work on online education for Beth Evergreen will continue today, too. Marilyn Saltzman found some mussar sites and I’m going to add Coursera and EDx courses. I also plan to look at other, more general online education sites. So far I’ve focused on online education focused on Jewish studies, but I imagine there are more courses. A fun project.
Here’s another one, which he titled, Can’t. This is forward art, playing with the notion of found objects and the limits of traditional print making. As often happens with art, this work came out of the struggles he had during the long divorcing.
I don’t miss the heavy lifting (the literal heavy lifting) for the most part, though part of my time at Beth Evergreen involves setting up for Adult Ed events and I do like moving chairs and tables, that sort of thing. Go figure. But I also need purposeful, intellect engaged physical activity. Different from exercise, which I also need. Cooking is physical and intellectual, also creative.
The sumi painting I’ve not yet fully engaged, still collecting materials, setting up my work space, learning techniques, but I intend to stay at it as long as it takes to get some proficiency. Precise or artistic hand work has never been my thing, but I’m going to change that, at least to some degree.
Kabbalah last night. It’s an odd experience for me in some ways. I’m learning a lot, seeing how to see in a very new way, looking at the bones of the universe. The thought world of the kabbalists is strange and wonderful, allowing for a peak behind the curtain of creation. Yet. There is too a limiting factor.
It’s more difficult to follow this approach in a faith community, even one as open and accepting of diverse thought as Beth Evergreen. The kabbalists influenced the prayer book and worship practices of all Jews, orthodox to reconstructionist. The Jewish civilization which Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan wanted to further through his project of reconstruction, though it has universalist instincts, remains firmly rooted in the tribal history.