February 1, 2025

Image: St. Bridget of Kildare’s Feast Day
According to Celtic spirituality, women’s power was most manifest in Bridget of Ireland—goddess, saint, and threshold figure. She bridged the worlds between rich and poor, pagan and Christian, slave and free.
Bridget of Ireland was born in the middle of the 5th century CE into a Druid household. She was taught the secrets of the old religion. She was goddess of hearth and guardian of fire. She founded a famous monastery in Kildare that housed a sacred flame until well into the 16th century.

Most Holy Bridget, Excellent Woman,
Bright Arrow, Sudden Flame;
May your bright fiery Sun
Take us swiftly to your lasting kin-dom.
The context of Bridget’s birth has great significance. She was born during a transitional time as Ireland was moving from the old religion into an era where St. Patrick and others were bringing the message of Christianity to the people. She was also born in a transitional location, the place of the threshold.

At sunrise, as Bridget’s mother crossed the threshold into the house, she gave birth in a place neither in nor out, neither day nor night. In Celtic spirituality, thresholds are sacred places where the veil between heaven and Earth seems especially thin and people feel keenly the presence of the sacred. Even today, many hang Bridget’s cross on their threshold or hearth to seek her blessing and to remember that the sacred is part of our everyday life.

Neither in nor out,
Neither day nor night,
Neither heaven nor Earth,
Shedding the past, walking into the future
We pass through the threshold of Bridget.
Later in her life, Bridget asked a rich man for land to build a monastery. He offered to give her a site as far as her cloak would reach. When she spread her cloak, it encompassed all of Kildare. This story places Bridget in the long line of female divinities throughout Europe and beyond who used their cloaks to claim the land they needed for their work.
Bridget’s cloak is a cloak of mercy.

An Old Irish Blessing: May Bridget’s mantle protect me always!
And we pray…
Holy Bridget, watch over our homes and our communities.
Goddess of hearth and guardian of fire,
Embrace us with your mantle of protection.
Breathe your healing blessing on each one.
In what now may be seen as "dark times," the marking of Imbolc (February 1st) and the Feast of St. Bridget are signs of resurrection. In Celtic tradition, it is the beginning of spring.
Bridget loves the earth, and she awakens in us an appreciation of “new life rising.” As winter gives way to spring in the Northern Hemisphere, we can feel the “resurrection energy.” Even in places where the ground is frozen and bare, we know that below the surface, seeds are active, reaching their roots down and extending their shoots upward.
Bridget, our friend of the heart, dwells beyond the veil between worlds. She is our midwife as we give birth to our hopes and dreams, our longings for a world desperately in need of resurrection. Bridget holds us in the sacred places, the thresholds, the liminal spaces. She holds us between the known and the unknown. Between our humanity and our understanding of the Divine Feminine within us. Between the now and what is still possible in our future.

Song for Meditation:
Come Sing a Song with Me, (lyric/video) words and music by Carolyn McDade, Sister, Carry On © 1992. Video from "Singing the Living Tradition" Words and Music - Carolyn McDade, Brian Kenny, Alena Hemingway, and the KUUF Choir 2019
Come sing a song with me (x3)
That I might know your mind.
Chorus: And I’ll bring you hope
When hope is hard to find
And I’ll bring a song of love
And a rose in the winter time.
Come dream a dream with me (x3)
That I might know your mind. Chorus
Come walk in rain with me (x3)
That I might know your mind. Chorus
Come share a rose with me (x3)
That I might know your mind. Chorus

Gathered materials from the Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual (WATER); planned by Diann L. Neu and Mallory Naake, 2016, and Nancy Tondy, Community of St. Bridget. 2024.
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