Submitted for the 2007 Liturgist Guild Yearbook. Written by Rev. Jenni Hunt
Close your eyes and stand firmly rooted to the Earth. Take a deep breath and feel the cold. Exhale a small cloud of frozen breath. Take a few moments to focus on the bitter cold. When you inhale, the icy chill fills your lungs, making you shiver and your teeth chatter.
You may have felt at times during the past week that you’d never been so cold… that you may never be warm again. You’ve noticed the days getting longer, but it still just keeps getting colder and colder.
See yourself as a bare, shivering tree on the top of windswept, craggy hill. The wind whistles through your bare branches, bending you back with its bitter, chill gusts until you think you will crack and be swept away.
But your strong roots firmly grasp the rocks and frozen ground. You are firmly embedded and will not be swept away. Feel those roots stretch down past the rock… down past the frosty soil and down into the warm, life-giving bosom of the Earth. Draw that warmth and life up through your roots… up through the frozen ground and rocks… up into your feet and legs, warming you and giving you energy… up through your groin and belly… warming your chest… flowing and warming your shoulders, arms and hands. Roll your neck and shoulders as the warm Earth waters flow up through your neck and head.
You notice now that the sun has come out from behind the clouds, and you squint as its bright, distant heat warms your brown leaves and mixes with the moist warmth from below. The sun grows stronger, and you feel its warmth on your face… warming your shoulders and arms… spreading down your back and filling your breast… swirling with the warm waters from below into your groin… down through your legs and into your feet.
Chill though the wind may be, you draw warmth, light and life from below and above.
With your mind’s eye, look around you on this cold, craggy hilltop. Steam rises up from the frozen ground at your feet, as the snow is melted from below and above. As you feel yourself thawing from the warmth that emanates from below and above… the warm vapor begins to dissipate from the air… the snow at your feet melts away and sinks down into the Earth, carrying with it the warm energy from the Sun… and the Earth pushes up from below a single, perfect crocus, living proof of the return of warmth from both below and above.
You realize now that you are not alone on this hilltop, with nothing at all to break the bitter wind. There are others just like you all around – bare-branched and frozen nearly to the marrow. Without this grove of trees, you would indeed have been naked to the elements. Without those surrounding you, there would have been no windbreak to protect you, alone, at the mercy of the cold.
We stand, as a grove, greater than the sum of our parts.
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“Imbolc Two Powers Meditation.” submitted by Rev. Jenni Hunt on 17 May, 2008
