Today is the Celtic feast of Imbolc, the start of the Spring in the old Celtic calendar and here in Ireland. The meaning of Imbolc may derive from  an old Irish word meaning “in the belly”, referring to sheep being pregnant. It was connected with the budding of new life,  which although hidden, gives rise to hope because Spring will soon be here.

Hiding is underestimated. We are hidden by life in our mother’s womb until we grow and ready ourselves for our first appearance in the lighted world…..Hiding done properly is the internal faithful promise for a proper future emergence, as embryos, as children or even as emerging adults in retreat from the names that have caught us and imprisoned us, often in ways where we have been too easily seen and too easily named.

We live in a time of the dissected soul, the immediate disclosure; our thoughts, imaginings and longings exposed to the light too much, too early and too often, our best qualities squeezed too soon into a world already awash with too easily articulated ideas that oppress our sense of self and our sense of others. What is real is almost always to begin with, hidden, and does not want to be understood by the part of our mind that mistakenly thinks it knows what is happening. Hiding is a bid for independence, from others, from mistaken ideas we have about our selves….Hiding leaves life to itself, to become more of itself. Hiding is the radical independence necessary for our emergence into the light of a proper human future.

David Whyte, Consolations