February 2nd is one of my favorite holidays. Some call it Imbolc, others Groundhog Day. Some celebrate with the Feast of St. Brigid, Ireland’s patroness saint who promises the gifts of spring: new life, abundance, protection. Going to wells is one of the practices of this day, as the well is that symbolic source of life-giving and life-sustaining energy. Before electricity, people brought their candles to Sunday Mass to be blessed. They needed the candles to last through the winter, thus, the first Sunday service in February is sometimes called Candlemass. No matter which way you say it, it is a cross-quarter day, meaning we are halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. It isn’t exactly the season of hope. I would call it endurance. The black bears are giving birth in their dens, and both mother and cubs will live off the fat stores of her body from the fall. The rhythm of the seasons teaches us that if we burn through all our candles, all our energy stores now, there won’t be enough to get up through the spring.
I am trying to listen to the lessons of this season, but I still feel myself getting ‘fired up’ as we enter into an election year. I was at a gathering making small talk with someone who has completely given up on democracy. He is so disgusted and dismayed as to believe his only course of action for himself and his young family is self- protection. He asked me how I can still believe in democracy and although I hadn’t thought of this answer ahead of time, it came blurting out: because I am involved with religious fellowships and I see individual citizens using collective action to make a difference all the time. And in an elemental way, that is what democracy is: leveraging our collective power in the service on our values.
My hope is that this fellowship is one of the sources to help keep us all in that balance between dismay and burning out as we gather our collective power for another election year.
—In endurance, Rev. Stacy