Brigid: Weaver of Kindred. Weaver of All?

Brigid is here. And where is "here" exactly?

Brigid, triple goddess, be with us. Watch over women, queer folks, migrants, all those whose rights and needs are threatened by the new regime.

Brigid, midwife and holy abortionist, be with us. We know you, saint on the side of bodily autonomy and women’s sovereignty from the start. And you know us, we who must stand sovereign of our fertile fields.

Brigid, lady of the augury, be with us. Look through the spyglass made of your own two hands and tell us you see a future where the earth and every creature are whole and healed.

Ah.

Brigid is here.

She is in the bird flight. She is the witness who can interpret the language of wing beats and the symbols in the skies. She can teach us how to do the same.

Brigid is she, and she is here, seeker and finder of the sweetest of omens, in spite of the bleak times we fear lie ahead.

I wrote an earlier version of those words last week in We Inaugurate with Brigid. Ten days later, as we live through a scenario that could be straight from Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine,¹ it’s a moment to refine and recommit to the prayers for help.

We need Brigid, and Brigid is here. Far beyond a single day, and far beyond her own Imbolc.

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As I was writing on January 20, the poet and activist, and many times KnotWork Myth & Storytelling guest Laura Murphy was witnessing a great augury over Kildare.

Laura watched a solitary swan fly over the Curragh of Kildare.² The bird flew over that great plain, coming from the direction of Tara, right into the heart of Brigid’s most sacred land.

There was Brigid of Augury, making herself seen in her ancient swan form. I hadn’t even had a chance to tell Laura that I would be re-releasing her story Brigid: Rebirth of the Mother (complete with the constellation Cygnus right there in the episode art) later in the week.

A phrase that I’ve shared many times before, but which always seems to bear repeating: fite fuaite. It mean means “inextricably interwoven” in Irish.

Brigid weaves us together now, just as she always has. She calls together kindred spirits who attune to her energy, but she also calls together the folks who might assume they have nothing in common at all. Her legacy reaches across millennia, after all. She is beloved as both goddess and saint, and finds her home in the heart of both pagan and Christian traditions.

I keep reminding myself of that, even when the divides in our culture and values seems so extreme.

This week, we open the newest season of the KnotWork Myth & Storytelling podcast with a visionary journey and a fabulous conversation with Treacy O’Connor.

Treacy is an ordained OneSpirit Interfaith Minister, guardian of Ireland's ancient ancestral wisdom, and someone with an enduring, vibrant relationship with Brigid. Much of Treacy’s work in the last few years has been devoted to making Brigid’s Day a national holiday in Ireland, and establishing and deepening the tradition with a celebrated community event in Balbriggan, a diverse, growing city north of Dublin.

Treacy exemplifies this vision that Brigid brings people together, weaves people together.

Brigid, Can You Weave Us All Back Together?

The tradition of weaving a Brigid’s cross is fite fuaite with our sense that Brigid herself is a weaver - of hearts, of communities, of bellies in her role as sacred midwife.

While there’s a risk that the comparison will break down here - who am I to imagine that Brigid cares as much as US politics as she does about celebrations in her name on her own land? - I’m willing to dream that the spirit of Brigid is a universal one.

Brigid is a goddess of the land, and a saint with her own particular place and history, but her power is not bound by oceans or borders.

And then, she traveled the world with the diaspora. Her story lived in the hearts of the emigrants and exiles, and was be transmitted to the generations who would be born and grow up so far from Kildare, Faughart, and Liscannor.

As I do my own Brigid work here on Turtle Island, it’s clear that folks want to be woven back into their lost ancestral tapestry, particularly if the stories didn’t travel down through family tradition.

This happens in circles of creatives and spiritual seekers, but Brigid’s influence isn’t merely about the difficult to quantify work of the soul. The New York-based Brigid Alliance, exists to help people get to an abortion provider. (This name is completely intentional. As they say on their website: “In the 7th century, St. Brigid of Kildare helped a young woman who had broken her vow of chastity and became pregnant. According to legend, Brigid waved her hands over the woman’s belly and, ‘exercising the strength of her ineffable faith, blessed her, caused the fetus to disappear without coming to birth, and without pain.’”)

That familiar prayer, “this year, more than ever, we need…”

I am guessing that many of us have and will again say things like “this year, more than ever, we need Brigid’s warmth and light to remind us of hope and the inevitable return of the spring.” It’s part of human nature to fear that we have, at last, reached the darkest of the dark days.

But I’ll risk it and say now, more than ever, we need Brigid to light the way and remind us how it might be possible to weave together to find a path to healing and justice.

There’s the risk of leaving this on a false note of saccharine hope.

The truth is, my kindred don’t want to be woven together with sexual predators, Nazi apologists, white supremacists, and deniers of climate crisis.

How do we heal the collective, heal those divisions, heal our own hearts as we face waves of fear and distrust every day?

I don’t know.

As you’ll hear in my conversation with

Treacy O'Connor

, there’s just so very much we do not know, and that sacred, immensely difficult uncertainty is essential in any true sense of spirituality right now.

And then there’s the one thing we repeat and rely on:

Brigid is here.

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In the bleakest times, we must gather & continue to create

If you’re seeking community and intend to birth new creative work in 2025 (in spite of it all, because of it all), I invite you to consider one of the writing groups I’m offering this year.

• The Authors’ Knot Program, February - November 2025
  
  An intimate 10-month online writing program for thought leaders, memoirists, and heart-led visionaries working on a book or another “big project.”
  
  This is ideal for you if you want more accountability and more specific feedback on your work. We're really going to focus on making progress on the thing you've been longing to write.
  
  Learn more & apply now.
  

• The Writers’ Knot Community, January - June 2025
  
  This is the long-running global community where the mythic imagination meets creative expression.
  
  No push to publish. No critiques. No discussions of fancy prizes. In this group, our focus is on writing practice and creative camaraderie.
  
  Register now

1. “‘Shock doctrine’ describes the brute tactic of systematically using the public’s disorientation following a collective shock—wars, coups, terrorist attacks, market crashes, natural disasters—to push through radical pro-corporate measures.” https://naomiklein.org/the-shock-doctrine

2. The Curragh is the land that Brigid was said to claim from the Bishop of Leinster when she tossed forth her miraculous cloak.