Today begins the ancient Gaelic holiday of Imbolc – the halfway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. And according to many of the witches of the internet, it’s the more nature based celebration of the new year. It celebrates the return of the sun as days get longer, it’s a time to set intentions for productivity in the coming seasons, and it’s a festival celebrated mostly indoors with ritual cleaning, baking, lighting candles, stuff like that. 

Marking the halfway point seems like a smart thing to do. It celebrates that now, with each passing day, we have already finished the hard part, and what is left of this cold season is not so much as we have had to suffer thus far. 

The ground outside my house is covered in over a foot of snow that won’t be melting anytime soon, but inside our house has been busy over the past few weeks with work and snow day activities, birthday parties, and sleepovers, and taking care of the seasonal colds that always pop up at this time of year. 

We enjoyed a day of sledding with our neighbor on one of the two snow days this week. I’m still not sure why there was a second snow day after the storm was done and all the snow was plowed, but we tried to make the most of it.

We participated in a tiny art show at our local library – the second the library has hosted. Dozens of local residents participated – people from all ages making colorful, beautiful, quirky art together. We went to the reception, and had fun talking with our librarians and the Friends of the Library about all of the art, and complimenting the amazing work of our neighbors. 

We also hosted 7 little girls at our home to celebrate my daughter’s 9th birthday. It was a Kpop Demon Hunters theme (of course) with a fabulous cake and a fairy clown magician who also made balloon animals and sculptures. And we played a variety of party games to satisfy the introverts (rock painting) and extroverts (a screaming loud Kpop version of pin the tail on the donkey, that involved ramyeon).

I have delighted in the moments of togetherness and laughter and light through these past several weeks as the temperatures dropped to below zero and we watched buckets of snow fall. I’ve remembered that many colleagues and writers and thinkers have shared that stress can damage your brain and nervous system, and seeking out joy in our everyday lives, finding breaks from the stress of current events, is actually really important for our health and well-being. 

But then, on the next beat, as I’ve enjoyed my cake and eaten it too, I have been thinking of Ilya Kaminsky’s We Lived Happily During the War. 

in my bed, around my bed America

was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house.

I took a chair outside and watched the sun.

Because we are living in a time of war, aren’t we? Armed forces are marching in the streets against citizens, and we are horrified to watch, and grateful if it isn’t happening to us.

And I have heard from so many, wondering how we can function in our normal life when there are people, neighbors, folks whose lives look much like ours, even if they are far away, suffering the worst possible consequences for being alive in the wrong place, at the wrong time. 

I do not have an answer to this question (I hope you were not expecting one). But I witnessed and heard a few things that helped me, and I figured I would share. 

A few weeks ago, a friend invited me to come to a protest/rally sort of thing outside an ICE facility in our state. I had not heard about this, but apparently, people have been meeting there weekly for months. The day we went it was freezing cold, but hundreds of people stood together, bearing witness to what we all agreed should not be happening. At one point a family–grandmother, mother, and child–left the facility, possibly after a check in, and several of the people at the rally waved and smiled. The family, driving away, waved and smiled back. That little moment of humanity is one I will carry with me. It costs nothing to be kind to someone, to look at them and recognize the divinity within them, and see it reflected back to you. But it did remind me that every horror we face is horrible because it is done to a beautiful and perfect soul that deserves to live in peace. 

Earlier this week, I also read some words from a woman who I met many years ago when she was an Americorps volunteer at an agency where I worked. Today, many years later, she is a minister at a Congregational Church. She recently went to Minnesota with 600 other clergy from across the nation to stand in solidarity with families being targeted by ICE. She shared some of her reflections on the trip. I think her words are the perfect cap to what I want to share, no need for me to paraphrase. I hope it touches and inspires you the way it did for me: 

“I didn’t answer this call because I felt brave. I didn’t answer this call recklessly. I was scared and I am scared. But I am at peace with the fear…I answered the call because I know that we are all connected…every creature and every person is a neighbor. More than that, I know that we are relatives in the family of creation, and what is happening here is hurting our family.

I also know without a shadow of a doubt that this is a pivotal moment in history. This is the time to take risks, even risks that we never imagined ourselves taking…. 

One day this occupation will end, but the relationships built on love and care and trust will not. We can be scared and still choose to move toward love. And we must choose to move toward love today, the “Strong, demanding kind of love” that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of; a love that transforms, a love that builds the beloved community. I know that we can get there, because I see it breaking into this world all the time in the actions of neighbors who reject the myth of scarcity and individualism. A better world is possible. We make it possible. Amen, may it be so.”