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I would like to express my deep gratitude to Goldenferi of Musings of the Night for this Bloggers of the World award.  It is beautiful and I love it and appreciate it!  I would like to pass it along to Aerolin of Becoming and MotherWintermoon of Romancing the Crone, both insightful writers of beauty, truth, and grace.

The older I get, the more I love the snow.  This winter, as more snow has fallen than in almost any winter on record, I hated what it did to the convenience in my life at first.  But now I see that each flake is a kiss from the hag, the Spirit of Winter, the old woman who presides over the deepening times of life, whenever they may occur.  She blesses us as we struggle with truths that become visible in the stark bone essence of the winter landscape, whether of the environment or of our souls.  She is the midwife of necessary endings and promises the hope of beginnings, however much they may or not be welcomed.  

Whether you are in the spring of life or nearing its end, snow has a message for you, for we all have times when we need the blessings of the Winter Hag.  She could leave us to our fates, but instead, like the good Mother that She is, she is present and makes herself known in these tiny drops of water, the very substance of life.

Snow is healing – it calms and quiets.  It has a soothing wisdom that does not proclaim, but instead drifts silently into consciousness, like a first snowfall on the grass.  When we are aching from loss, snow shows us how to be a balm for ourselves and others.

Snow honors and comforts the poorest.  Its beauty is for all.  It makes next spring’s crops grow as it brings nutrients to the soil of every farmer.   No one’s sorrows or needs, even our own, are too meager for snow’s ministrations.

Snow demands respect.  If its power in an avalanche or blizzard is ignored or belittled, its destruction can be devastating.  But these maelstroms are part of the earth and its atmosphere, just as upheaval is necessary in our own lives at times.  Snow requires us to honor all aspects of Her nature, and we learn that we must also honor our own. 

Snow knows how to be solitary – the single flake wafting down from the sky – and also one of many as a storm.  Especially in times of emotional winter, we must be alone to meet ourselves but also be able to then re-emerge into the company of others and begin to live again.

If you are lucky enough to live where it snows, go outside the next time the Hag of Winter breathes her blessings upon you.  Let her surround and embrace you with her cooling, strengthening, mysterious presence.  Learn from her.  If you live in a warmer climate, seek her anyway.  She is there for you.

Winter seems to be the time for celebrations.  All over the world, people focus on festivities around both the Winter Solstice and then the Spring Equinox.  These are the celebrations of the Great Mysteries — the coming of the Light, the birth of Diety,  magnificent miracles, overcoming death – that happen in the realms beyond our everyday senses, in the great cosmos, as we watch from below in awe and wonder.  I enjoy these holidays, but they always seemed a bit too far above my day-to-day life for me to really understand and be an essential part of.

Imbolc, which falls between the two celebratory seasons on February 2, always seemed to me to be a somewhat outdated holiday.  In the Celtic cultures in which it was celebrated, it was the early spring holiday when the lambs began to be born and the first plants began pushing up through the soil.  Where I live, it occurs in the deepest of winter, when the snow is three feet deep and the first crocuses are almost three months away.  

But, if we look at it differently, perhaps it could become a third holiday that celebrates the Mysteries that occur in everyday life, the “kitchen mysteries” that do not originate in the heavens, but on earth; that we help create with what we always do after getting up in the morning everyday; that are not celebrated with global festivities, but at our breakfast tables and in our gardens. 

Though I cannot see the seeds of rebirth preparing to bud, it is happening all the same in this most basic manifestation of the Great Mystery of the coming of the renewal of life, of light’s return, of the earth and Divine joining to make the world anew.  This coming back to life or into life occurs each day as our children grow from babies into full-grown adults with lives, spirits, and personalities of their own.  I see it in all of our creative endeavors that begin with the smallest of ideas and transform into books, paintings, quilts, organizations or businesses, and so many things.

Perhaps we can make Imbolc a time to celebrate those Mysteries in our everyday lives the same way we do the other holidays, with decorations, foods, and activities that symbolize the message of this time.  Just as we begin to prepare for those other holidays for weeks, I plan to get ready for Imbolc starting now.  What might we do to honor those seeds of so many things that are the bridge between the winter and spring, a wasteland and abundance, the old and the new?

I have already begun watering a planter full of crocus bulbs and their little heads peeked through the soil yesterday.  If I had enough light in my house, I would plant more seeds for flowers, vegetables and herbs.  What can you begin to plant?

We can make an Imbolc mix of seeds, nuts, and dried fruits to put out for snacks during these weeks ahead.  We can serve meals to ourselves and our families that are high in nutrients, full of the life of the seed as it prepares for its journey to the upper world, and that are full of the spirit of the earth.  These might include more seeds, lentils, beans, root vegetables and, to celebrate the coming abundance, grains.

We can read or listen to a retelling of the story of Innana. This story is, to me, a perfect Imbolc tale because it recreates the journey of soul to the underworld where she is purified and made wise so that she can re-emerge into the earth better able to serve. 

We can find ways to nurture children and help them bring forth their own inner powers. We can spend more time with our own children or others for whom we have caregiving responsibilities, asking more questions about their interests and dreams. We can volunteer or donate to organizations that work for children with special needs, education, or other similar causes.  We can share our skills and experience to benefit children who may come across our paths at this time and throughout the year.

We can spend some time doing at least one creative project that has lain dormant for whatever reason.  It may be writing about a subject that scares us.  It may be trying some new media – if you are a writer, paint; if you bead, make something out of clay; if you are a singer, try cooking.

This new kind of Imbolc is a holiday that you can make your own.  What does it mean to you and what would you like it to be?

I recently learned a lesson in both the magic of the unexpected and the life-giving and deeply complex flow that makes the ordinary and everyday possible, which begins with the earth’s turning to bring each dawn and has grown into cars and jobs and all that makes up our modern life.

I was waiting at an intersection on a snowy day when a driver on the cross street ran a red light, hit another vehicle, skidded, and came flying across the intersection to whack me head-on.   My car has been out of service ever since and it is only now, two weeks later, that I am beginning to feel  as if my soul has re-entered my body.  I now know why traditional people and others seek shamans at times of illness and trauma.  Even though my trauma was minor compared to what many other people face, how I have wished that someone would venture into the otherworld to retrieve who I was as I wandered without center, without the previously unspoken, but still absolute belief that I would survive each day unscathed. 

So, during these two weeks I have worshipped at the altar of the Goddess of the Unexpected.  I have been cast into her realm where no other, more comfortable, aspects of the divinity within can dwell. It has been just She and I as I have come to slowly explore my home in exile from my comfortable kitchen where I know who I am and what I will do each day.

It is a place where the everyday becomes deified simply because I finally understand how each day is truly a miracle, where each moment that goes as I expect it will is a complex orchestration of galactic mathematics, of earth’s delicate ecology, of human interaction and cooperation. I have come to truly appreciate this everyday life that I have been trying to celebrate in this blogsite.

But, this temple of the Goddess of the Unexpected is even more than that.

It is a place where I can be truly myself, can finally see myself exactly as I am because who I have built myself up to be, who I wish others to see, no longer exists while I am in this realm. 

It is a place of true new beginnings. Without the gravity of the my own expectations of what I should be and do that day pulling on me, I can now take flight into the endless sky.

It is a well of power freed from within myself as I experience my own will to survive, as I allowed myself to fall into dissolution and stopped the descent by pure desire to live again my everyday, “in a teapot” life.

It is a well of intense terror that I had no idea could be unleashed within me and the knowledge that now I can magically turn it back by the force of my mind’s ability to see myself from outside myself and to think analytically.

I am now gathering all these gifts as I embark on my journey back to everyday life.  Even though, during the first few days, I experienced that realm as a prison into which I had been cast to undergo some kind of tortured inquisition, now I embrace this Goddess of the Unexpected and express my appreciation that I have lived in Her Realm, as much as I hope not to have to go there again anytime soon.

Coincidentally, before the accident, I had been “memed” by Cate to list unusual things about myself.   Each of these aspects of myself is a small spell cast by the Goddess of the Unexpected, something that does not quite fit with most of my everyday life and makes my life therefore more fascinating, more passionate, more creative.  By venturing into these unexpectednesses, I taste some of that power, some of the liberation, some of the otherworldly sparkle of life outside the routine and expected.

1. I love kitsch.  When I moved into my house, I inherited lots of objects from my grandmother and mother-in-law so my home reflected their rather elegant and Baroque tastes, respectively.  As I came up on half a century of life, I decided it was time for my surroundings to appeal to me, so I went shopping and bought whatever caught my eye.  As I unpacked my shopping bags I came upon an undeniable truth.   I love kitsch – tiny ceramic teapots for my kitchen, silk flowers in every room, circus pink pillows.  Someone stop me before I hang velvet pictures of waifs with really, really big eyes… I think I love the innocence of kitsch, the pure childlike joy of it, the colors and icons that bring my heart back to another time of my life when I had fewer questions and answers were surer.  Maybe I just have no taste.

2. I once sat in a taxi with Helen Hayes, the famous actress.  I was working for the press office of a NYC agency and she was helping us publicize a program for low-income, frail elders.  I have no idea what I said, but I’m sure it was ridiculous, and I’m sure she was absolutely gracious.  I also met Danny Kaye at a fundraiser for the same program.  He was extremely jolly.  And I once danced with Patti Smith at a rock and roll club in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  That’s about it for my encounters with celebrities.

3. One of my legs is a half inch longer than the other.  This throws off my whole bone structure and has ultimately caused me to be in mild pain just about all the time.  But, at the same time, it makes me constantly aware of my physical being and the fact that I am connected to the air around me and the rock or soil of the earth under my feet, since these both determine if I will walk well that day.

4. I look almost exactly like my mother.  Photos of us when we were both quite young are almost indistinguishable and we both look different from anyone on her side of the family. Sometimes this is distressing, when I think of some of the physical problems she had that I worry about inheriting or when my identity sometimes seem to meld into hers.  Other times it is quite comforting, an obvious link to the women of my family that has, I think, made me more aware of the importance of being bonded to those women who came before and after me.

5. My favorite Goddess icon is The Sleeping Goddess of Malta, the statue of the woman or Goddess asleep on a couch, possibly experiencing some kind of vision.  In fact, I love sleeping more than just about any other activity and always have.  I don’t have especially insightful or inspiring dreams, I just love the physical feeling of sleep.  Perhaps in a former life I was some kind of priestess whose job it was to envision while sleeping and I got a taste for it.

6. I have an almost supernatural attraction to Scotland.  I may or may not have ancestors from there.  One evening, about 30 years ago, I heard the Tannahill Weavers, a band that plays Scottish traditional music and I was completely mesmerized.  For about the next 15 years, I was obsessed with finding out everything I could about this country and its history and culture.  About 20 years ago I took a trip there and came across the field where the Battle of Culloden took place, the battle that ushered in the attempted destruction of Highland culture and the migration of hundreds of thousands of Scots who were forced off their land, including possibly my ancestors.  I found the spot where the clan that has the same name as my mother stood. I stood on that ground and thought about how forces much mightier than me in terms of weapons and power had done everything in their power to destroy the spirit and the lives of those who had stood on this ground before me, but, yet, here I was 250 years later, their living legacy, returned, alive, remembering, and carrying on all that had been taken from them and that they had come to America to regain.

It has been so long since I have been able to write in this blog that the meme has, I’m sure, gone on without me.  So I now tag anyone reading who would like to make her or his own venture into the Temple of the Goddess of the Unexpected by writing about seven unusual biographical things.