The Promise of Spring

February 1st - St Brigid's Day and Imbolic. Spring, bringing new life, is just around the corner.

Today is St Brigid’s Day. It’s also Imbolc, an ancient festival to mark the arrival of Spring. Celtic in origin, it is symbolised by the image of Winter as an old crone being handed over to a young maid, Spring.  Nature was central to Celtic life and beliefs and Brigid, though a nun and founder of churches and schools, was close to nature.  Unlike other European countries, Ireland welcomes the first day of spring on  Feb 1st.  The days are gradually lengthening and the darkness is being slowly pushed back.


We are living through dark times at present, not only in terms of the natural cycle of the year, but economically, socially, politically, spiritually and morally.  We are in desperate need of light, life and a new beginning. Though of different traditions, one Christian and the other pagan, the ideals are strikingly similar. 


Below are 2 blessings – one from each tradition.  They hope and pray for peace, charity, mercy, wisdom and love – all things we and our world desperately need now. If we all hold these ideals in our hearts, we too can push back the darkness and create a new spring and new beginnings.



Happy Feb 1st to you all, whoever you are, wherever you’re from, whatever the colour of your skin, whatever your beliefs or religion. 

"I would like an abundance of peace. I would like full vessels of charity. I would like rich treasures of mercy. I would like cheerfulness to preside over all."

St. Brigid of Kildare (451 - 523)

"Blessed be the earth, and all who dwell upon it.
We give thanks for the season now departing from us,
For the blessings it has bestowed upon us,
And upon those with whom we share this world.


Blessed be the new season.
We pray that it will be a time filled with peace,
With abundance, with prosperity,
With wisdom,
With love.


Blessed be all who share this feast.
Let us now prepare for the time ahead
By opening our hearts, and our minds, and our spirits.

Blessed be."


(Imbolc Blessing)

The Causes of Poverty

Robert Tressell 
(Robert Noonan)

Author of 'The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists'

 
(18 April 1870 – 3 February 1911)

 His grave in Liverpool where he died of TB while planning to go to America with his daughter.

 An extract from Robert Tressell's 'The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.'   Written between 1905 and 1908, it seems very little has changed, or perhaps become even worse.

 

“Poverty is not caused by men and women getting married; it's not caused by machinery; it's not caused by "over-production"; it's not caused by drink or laziness; and it's not caused by "over-population". It's caused by Private Monopoly. That is the present system. They have monopolized everything that it is possible to monopolize; they have got the whole earth, the minerals in the earth and the streams that water the earth. The only reason they have not monopolized the daylight and the air is that it is not possible to do it. If it were possible to construct huge gasometers and to draw together and compress within them the whole of the atmosphere, it would have been done long ago, and we should have been compelled to work for them in order to get money to buy air to breathe. And if that seemingly impossible thing were accomplished tomorrow, you would see thousands of people dying for want of air - or of the money to buy it - even as now thousands are dying for want of the other necessities of life. You would see people going about gasping for breath, and telling each other that the likes of them could not expect to have air to breathe unless they had the money to pay for it. Most of you here, for instance, would think and say so. Even as you think at present that it's right for so few people to own the Earth, the Minerals and the Water, which are all just as necessary as is the air. In exactly the same spirit as you now say: "It's Their Land," "It's Their Water," "It's Their Coal," "It's Their Iron," so you would say "It's Their Air," "These are their gasometers, and what right have the likes of us to expect them to allow us to breathe for nothing?" And even while he is doing this the air monopolist will be preaching sermons on the Brotherhood of Man; he will be dispensing advice on "Christian Duty" in the Sunday magazines; he will give utterance to numerous more or less moral maxims for the guidance of the young. And meantime, all around, people will be dying for want of some of the air that he will have bottled up in his gasometers. And when you are all dragging out a miserable existence, gasping for breath or dying for want of air, if one of your number suggests smashing a hole in the side of one of the gasometers, you will all fall upon him in the name of law and order, and after doing your best to tear him limb from limb, you'll drag him, covered with blood, in triumph to the nearest Police Station and deliver him up to "justice" in the hope of being given a few half-pounds of air for your trouble.”

Robert Noonan with his daughter, Kathleen
 

  Kathleen as an adult.  

She fought hard to have her father's book published.

 

http://www.hastingschronicle.net/tressell_02.html

http://www.unionhistory.info/ragged/tressell.php