If you’ve seen me around Facebook, on one of my blogs, or in one of my classes, the chances are I’ll have been sharing something to do with Brigit.

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Many years ago, I left the church I’d been raised in and spent a stretch of time as a plain old atheist. But there was something missing – someone to turn to in difficult moments, a framework for the celebrations of life, and the community that comes with having a religion to lean on. I became a Pagan, at a time when women’s spirituality was blossoming and where the Wiccan community was also around (though not as visible to me in my feminist activist world). I found a lot of what I wanted as I delved into this living goddess spirituality, but after a while it became clear that I didn’t just want a goddess, I wanted one I could feel completely at home with, one more familiar culturally than Inanna (who I liked a LOT), maybe even one my ancestors would have known. I began to look for her. When I learned about Brigit sometime in 1983, I felt an immediate connection, and the excitement of that meeting remains with me till today.

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One thing about her story bothered me, though. It was the extinguishment of the perpetual flame tended by her nuns. In late 1992 I decided I wanted to do something for Brigit, and rekindling that flame seemed something I was capable of—with a little help from my friends. I gathered as many of them as I could and on Imbolc 1993 we became the Daughters of the Flame, lighting the first of a continuous stream of candles, lanterns, and hearth-fires since that day.

 

For many years I concentrated on finding my feet with the Daughters. Putting out our newsletter, organising shifts, building connections with the women who found us, mostly through word of mouth, and practising my own devotion to Brigit.

 

In 2004 I took another step in sharing my love of her: I started the blog Brigit’s Sparkling Flame. This is a general interest blog—anything I could find about her, which for a long time wasn’t very much. I was fairly certain no one actually read the blog but me, but it was a good excuse to do what I like doing anyway. Find out more about Brigit and her following.

 

In 2011 I began writing a lot of poems and prayers to Brigit. It was the year that I learned I had cancer, and the odd trickle of words that had always been there became a surging river. Four years later I decided to stop keeping them to myself and launched a blog specifically for Brigit poems by myself and others, Stone on the Belly.

 

The next year I was given the opportunity to teach an online class, and within a couple of years I had written three: an introductory class, Discovering Brigit, a goddess activation class which continues from the first, Stepping Into Brigit, and an independent “deep dive” immersion class, Journey with Brigit, Goddess of Poetry. I cannot express what a joy it’s been to write these classes (BIG learning curve!) and to share them with the people who have taken them in their various incarnations. To bear witness to the joy and struggles that each participant brings with them, to read their poems, hear their dreams, and have some small part in their path has brought me great happiness and opened my eyes to ways of seeing Brigit I had not considered before. I hope that I will be able to carry on offering these classes for a long time to come.

 

As all of this was going on, I was continuing to explore every facet of Brigit that I encountered by writing more poems and songs about her, more prayers and blessings. Eventually I decided to collect many of these in a book, which of course needed a glossary, and resources, and notes, and a few essays...

 

As this work continued, Vyviane Armstrong of Land, Sea, Sky Travel came into my life, inviting me to present at her first Year of the Gods online conference—and then at another, and another. New vistas opened in doing this work. Is there no end to what I can learn about Brigit and the people who are drawn to her? And is there no end to the ways she can inspire and guide? It seems not.

 

The purpose of Brigit’s Portal is to gather these different strands together and make them available to anyone drawn to Brigit. And of course to give me one more way to immerse myself in her.

 

The book, by the way, is finished. And to my delight, A Brigit of Ireland Devotional - Sun Among Stars will be available, in the fullness of time, from Moon Books.

 

May Brigit’s brightest blessings shine upon you. And may you find joys, large or very, very small, in every day of your life.

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