Winter has just started. Over the last week or so, it's been properly cold for the first time this winter, and it is actually snowing outside. So of course it was today that our OBOD seedgroup celebrated the first festival of Spring.

With the Winter so far having been very mild, there are actually quite a few signs of Spring about. The snow drops in my garden have just dropped their little flower heads. Lots of bulbs are beginning to show green growth above ground. Deep in the belly of the Earth, things are stirring, seeds are softening, things are beginning to grow - and they will do so more visibly once the weather gives them a chance.

At my own private celebration for Imbolc, I remembered all the shedding and letting go that happened in the past five months. I remembered how at Samhain and the Winter Solstice I was feeling stripped bare and emptied out. And in a way, despite pain and tiredness, I was feeling more free than ever. Since the Winter Solstice, I have been going back to work, and I've begun to reconstruct a more normal life for myself at last. That is a great thing, but with my return to normality, I seem to have also fallen into some old habits. I can feel my shoulders tensing. I can feel how I hold my breath. I feel how all the old ways of protecting myself, of shielding my so vulnerable ego-self are creeping back.

With my Imbolc ritual, honouring the first gateway into a new growing cycle, I wanted to step back into that feeling of clear emptiness, filled with the presence of the Goddess. Because I think that presence is so important. It is her gift to me, and a gift and blessing I give to the world. At the gateway, the Lady met me, and reminded me what I have learned about softening my shell. Like the frost and damp softens the outer shell of a seed, the wall of tension I habitually create about myself can be softened.

Some of that is quite literal. It is about letting my belly to be soft. You wouldn't believe what a tall order that is. I don't know when I last allowed myself to feel what goes on in there. All those 'gut feelings' and inner knowings that come from letting yourself notice what is happening in your tummy. I have been shielding myself from those for decades. Historically, in my early life, I had some completely valid reasons to do that. Those reasons are not here any more. I can take a chance on feeling these things with reasonable confidence that all will be well.

This is my intent for the new growing cycle: I will witness life as it presents itself to me, outside and in. I will bring the presence of the Goddess to the stream of life as it flows through me and around me. I will witness the things that distract me from presence as much as the blessings it brings me. I will dream the blessing of presence for myself and my world.