This is what happens when I work out and sleep deeply.  I wake up the next day and I'm hyper-communicative.  You've been warned...

It's funny how the High Holidays change for me over time.  For many years, I felt Imbolc was kind of a throwaway holiday--I didn't really understand it and barely celebrated it.  Fast forward.  It's one of my favorite holidays now.  I think it started building up in my mind when I went to a Brigid's Faire celebration out in Illinois back in 2001.  Revel Moon's first gig, incidentally.  The CUUPS group out there was something like 40-60 people, and they threw one hell of a party.  Gorgeous ritual (Lupercalia style--young men chasing the girls around, lots of shrieking--it was great), then storytelling and music.  Everyone there took the stage for a little while.  Sometimes what they told was fiction, sometimes it was what they'd learned over the past year, sometimes they sang or chanted or played drums.  When everyone had finished, there was a big drum circle.  And somehow, hearing the stories from so many different paths, spending time in the dead of winter in a room full of light and laughter, was wonderful.  It was healing and renewing and fun all at once.

And that's when it clicked for me.  Imbolc is meant to be the catalyst--it steals a little bit of Spring's craziness and blows it wide open for a day when the world is still in a time of darkness.  It's time to clean the house, throw out the crap from last year, light all the lights, blast some rock music and welcome the coming Spring.  It's purification, but like all things Pagan, it's seriousness tinged with fun.  After all, agriculturally we're celebrating the ewes being pregnant and dropping lambs.  Hooray for sex!  It's time to get laid again!  Let's dust off the lingerie and go crazy!  It's that new energy we all need when we're tired of the cold and dark.

And maybe as I've grown older, I've also come to understand the need for new beginnings--the need to put a final period on that last sentence and turn the page to start a new chapter.  New Years Eve worked for me when I was a kid, but now it's Imbolc.  I always feel full of hope and new life after an Imbolc ritual (even if it's just the aforementioned house cleaning).  Kind of an 'Okay, that year's DONE.  I can move on now.

This is why, several weeks ahead of time, I start getting really excited.  And why, the week of, I'm bouncing up and down with anticipation for the Thursday ritual and this weekend's Brigid's Faire.  Perhaps this year it's especially important to me.  I have a new knee, a new band, new motivation and, soon enough, I'll be moving to a new house.  Time for the start of another cycle in my life.  I'm writing the last few sentences of the past year now.  I can't wait to turn the page...