Sermon “Sacred Flames” The Rev. Rali Weaver

First Church and Parish in Dedham

2/1/09

Today is Super bowl Sunday and many us will be celebrating the end of the fall and winter sport of football which has carried us through these emerging cold seasons but I want to remind us that February 1^st and 2^nd are also the convergence of several ancient times of festival and celebration.

I believe we ignore these other earthly celebrations partly because February is a frozen month in our region and hardly seems time to celebrate the earth. The cold and ice inhibit our bones from raising any sense of celebration. This feels like a time for hunkering down. A time of bundling up, of shoveling and salting and for fortifying our hearts for more winter to come.

Because Snow is no longer a novelty if it weren’t for Punxsutawney Phil’s weather prognostication we might not even raise our heads to notice this season.

And so it is that even now, in this moment, as I encourage you to thaw a bit with me here in this place and turn your minds toward the imperceptible signs of spring, I recognize this is a stretch. Looking out these windows at the icicles and snow it is hard to imagine that spring will come again.

And with the recent weather system barreling through the Pennsylvania valley last week and with Groundhogs Day just tomorrow it is hard to imagine that we will see anything but six more weeks of winter whether the groundhog sees his shadow or not.

In ancient times before the onset of Christianity and before Punxsutawney Phil was ever dreamt of the celebration of Imbolc was the harbinger of spring. Imbolc is one of the four principle festivals of the Pagan calendar and celebrates the lactating of the sheep, the fire of longing, the promise of fertility and all of the slowly emerging signs of spring.

Imbolc is the promise that the seasons turn in all of life and all aspects of the cycle have beauty. This Celtic and Pagan festival is traditionally a season of weather forecasting that has been simplified into the Northeastern tradition of Groundhogs day. In ancient times, Imbolc would have represented the time for watching for snakes and badgers to emerge from their winter dens and to witness the sheep beginning to lactate.

Imbolc is the day on the solar calendar that marks exactly halfway between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox. Originally dedicated to the Celtic goddess Brighid this day was even adopted in the early Christian period as St Brigid's Day.

Both the native Irish Goddess and Christian St. Brigid were associated with cows and early spring. The tradition of female priestesses tending sacred, naturally-occurring "eternal flames" is a feature of ancient Indo-European pre-Christian spirituality. As both goddess and saint Brigid is also associated poetry. The use of imagination in story telling and poetry is central to the ancient celebrations.

Because Brigid was the most popular goddesses worshipped by the druids many of the legends and symbols surrounding her story have survived in the persona of Saint Brigid through accounts of St. Bridgid’s life and the recounting of her visions the Celtic legends were preserved. Whether seen as goddess or saint, Brigid is largely associated with the home and hearth and is a favorite in Ireland of both Pagans and Christians.

For all of you who grew up Christian or even those few who attended bible study this Advent, you may be aware that this Sunday also represents Candlemas which is the Christian celebration of Jesus being presented at the temple and recognized as the son of God by the old man Simeon who had waited his whole life to see the Messiah.

Pagans believe that Candlemas was a Christianization of the Gaelic festival of Imbolc. Imbolc, St Brigid’s Day and Candlemas are all associated with sacred flames, holy wells and healing. The lighting of candles at this season represents the return of warmth and the increasing power of the Sun. The story of the baby Jesus being brought to the temple and then recognized by the elder is another perfect metaphor for this time of the convergence of the old and the new.

At the season of Imbolc we are presented with the overlap of new winter and spring. We are confronted in this time with all of the seasons of life intertwining knowing that each moment even the frozen icy moments of winter even the sneaking possibilities of springtime, if we attend to them, can become the sacred fires of our lives pointing us to the sacred fires of possibility that are around every bend. We are each called in this time of fertility to recognize the sacred flames of living that carry us through every season of our lives and to hold the beauty of the barely emerging warmth in our hearts.

From this vantage point what this requires of us is the sacred fire of our imaginations. Imagination is the fire of our intellect through which we encounter the world. The things that we touch, see and hear coalesce into a "picture" through our imagining. One hypothesis is that human imagination has allowed conscious beings to solve problems and a fertile imagination has been known to create great things. Imagination is one of the most advanced of the human faculties.

Yet even children have a natural born capacity for imagining that time and knowledge and life experience often drags out of them. There is an element of imagining that our culture believes is frivolous and asks our children to put away.

As I have been reflecting on the sacred fires of imagination I realized two times in my life when I witnessed the grief caused by the loss of imagination. Once was when I was playing with a friend’s five-year old son on the playground and he was telling me of a Spiderman costume his father was going to make him for Halloween. As he told me all of the things he would be able to do as Spiderman he began to rationalize that the costume would not enable him to become Spiderman but only to pretend to be Spiderman. The disconnect that this created in his brain was heartbreaking to watch. How much more free he seemed when he could hold to the possibility that anything was possible.

The same thing happened on a very rainy day in my father’s kitchen when I was spending time with my three oldest nieces when they were about five four and three years old. As we sat in the kitchen and noticed the rain we imagined that the rain would become a great flood as in the bible and I encouraged them to think what could be done. As fundamentalist Christians they were already well schooled in the bible and thought about building an ark. We had pop-cycle sticks and began to bind them together until my oldest niece began to realize that there would not be enough pop cycle sticks to solve the problem and we could not actually build an ark big enough to carry us.

I tell you these stories today to illustrate examples of times when the sacred fire of imagination is extinguished when confronted by reality.

These are the extreme examples in childhood but I believe this same phenomenon happens daily to adults who begin to dream of bigger things and then stop short from imagining new possibilities because they don’t fit into our limited beliefs about the world.

I believe that the sacred fire of imagination is desperately needed in our times.

Celtic and Pagan spirituality calls us to open our hearts to the life that is alive in each of us in every season and stage of living to see each emerging moment whatever it is as a magical gift given to us. Whether in a time of abundance or dearth these times are magical. Whether in a time of fertility or gestation or harvest or endings these are rich and magical times. Imbolc reminds us to tend the sacred fires within our souls so that they do the work that carries us to new possibilities that may be difficult to rationalize from our current vantage pint.

This is the time for planning gardens when there is so much white on the ground that you can no longer remember the color of earth. It is the possibility of what will come from nothing, the hint of mud that peeks at you beneath the snow that you imagine will offer crocus, it is the sound of birds singing in blue sky when everything else around you is frozen in silence it is that period of fertility that proceeds gestation and the sacred fire of imagination that comes before any new idea is grown that Imbolc celebrates.

In our more modern and more humanistic setting I believe that the sacred fires that we speak of are the sacred fires of imagination, the sacred fires of longing and of possibility and of hope and of all the things that lift us out of this frozen time and carry us through. These sacred fires are in us in every stage and every season of life. As all fires they only require that we tend them to keep them burning.

May the cycles of cold and warmth and darkness and light nourish you.

May every season of life inform you.

May the cross section of old and new comfort you.

May your eyes and heart be turned to the emerging time.

May the fertile hope of your imagination inspire you.

May your sacred inner fire keep you warm.

May it be so and blessed be.