Today (or yesterday, depending on who you ask or how you want to measure days) is Imbolc, the mid-winter holiday of the general Pagan calendar.
While not technically the darkest of the dark days of winter, for those of us in the non-tropical regions of the northern hemisphere, it sure does kick of what is typically the nastiest part of winter.
Already stressed from the cold months that have passed, our minds and bodies are feeling the effects of the dead world around us. Nature is, generally speaking, wrapped up and hiding from everything, leaving us with gray and brown landscapes, often covered in a brilliant, lifeless white or deadly ice.
Thing is, even while we’re troming around all bundled up, wishing it were warmer, Nature isn’t just hiding. It’s gearing up for the spring–conserving some energy, transmuting other (stored) energy, growing in strength. There’s a lot going on under the surface, we just can’t see it all the time.
Today is also Groundhog Day, that wonderful bit of Americana that has grown into a pop-culture phenomenon. Heck, it was even the backdrop to one of my favorite Bill Murray comedies, the appropriately named Groundhog Day.
In that movie cynical, jaded and arrogant newscaster Phil Connors finds himself trapped not only in a small town that he despises, but in time. Again and again the day repeats itself. No matter what he does, it seems, he always finds himself waking up once more to the same cheesey song blaring through the motel radio, running into the same people, again and again and again.
The real beauty in this is the subtext. Connors is stuck in his own patterns and is oblivious to that fact until he’s forced to see just how similar all of his normal actions are. He’s put up his own layers of dead wood, frozen sod and encrusting ice, cutting himself off from the better parts of himself.
Those parts are still there, though. Just like the natural world keeps working even when we can’t see it, our own inner world plugs right along through most of our distractions. Oh, there are consequences of ignoring all those inner working, but, for the most part, most people can go a good long time without any obvious ill effects.
Everything–seen or unseen–follows it’s own cycle. The Wheel of the Year turns from season to season. The ground freezes and thaws, the trees shed their leaes and then bud, grass turns from brown to green. Our actions spawn reactions, those reactions have ripples that touch others and bounce back to us as new chancces for action. It all goes round and round and round.
And sometimes, we get stuck.
These big, classic, seasonal markers are chances for us to do two things: take stock of where we are in our own cycles and, if we so choose, make use of the natural ebb and flow around us to kick-start that move to a new, more healthy (or more desiered) cycle.
Of course, that all requires that we be aware of those deep internal workings we may have buried away ages ago. Digging them out can be more difficult than attempting to work the back yard garden before the snow has melted, but it is possible.
Be willing to do that work. Be willing to make the jump. And don’t be too scared by that bit of Darkness you may see–it’s just a part of you… illuminated by the winter sun.
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