The flowers in the garden were just waiting for some warm weather to show their colours. In the last week we've gained elder flowers, roses, and yellow flag irises. And those buttercups shine their golden faces to the sun. This is what I call the flower tide of the year, the time when our plans and ideas unfold and begin to show themselves to the world.

At the Winter Solstice, which for me is the beginning of the year, the theme that came up in my private ritual was Renewal. For a year full of dreams for the future, but also full of memories of trying times just left behind, it is a great idea to work with. I have discovered, so far, that at the centre of this renewal is a closer identification with the core of my being.

The core of each of us is divine, and the deity who speaks to me from the centre of myself is the Lady who is my bones and who holds the dance of the stars in her winged embrace. I meet her in my meditation practice, the still place at the centre of my life. When I let go of my life's baggage, her presence is all that remains.

The warm weather literally makes it easier for me to relax into her presence. Just like the flowers, I open up into the warm light of the sun. As Druids, we pray to be granted 'the love of all existences'. I see that as a prayer for the capacity to hold all of reality, all of what is, in our hearts and deeply feel it. When the practice of presence expands the edge of my being, I am much greater than my own limited humanity. I can hold with compassion all that moves through my world.

We all have the capacity to be with our divine centre and to open up to the world with compassion. As I listen to the changes that move around me and through me, the song of birds, the hum of a car in the street, the feelings and sensations in my own body, I can move with them and dance with them.

Of course I will get knocked off centre. For any normal mortal, that is inevitable. But with my capacity to love all existences comes the capacity to return to that place: the stillness of the centre, the porous flexibility of the edge. This place is vibrantly alive; a place of deep renewal.