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| Several years' worth of Brigid's crosses. Lynne Cantwell | 2025 |
Imbolc is the day to celebrate Brigid, the Irish goddess of poetry, healing and smithcraft. (It's also a day to honor the Christian saint of the same name, but I'm talking about Paganism here.) I saw a post on Facebook over the past couple of days in which the author tried to argue that Brigid was also a goddess of conflict. Don't bother asking Google's A.I. -- you'll get the usual conflation of Brigid the Irish goddess with both St. Brigid and Brigantia, a goddess of Celtic Britain who's also linked to Boudica, a queen of Icenic tribe who managed to hold off the Romans for a while in CE 61 or so. Maybe that's where the idea originates of a link between Brigid and conflict.
But Brigid is not the Morrigan. Hers is instead the gentler art of conflict resolution -- of poetry and healing, and of lamenting the dead (she's credited with inventing keening). If She carries a hammer, it's because She uses it at Her forge. Making weaponry is not the same as wielding it. And iron can be shaped into more than just swords.
That's my experience of it, anyway.
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I guess you could say that conflict is a theme of both halves of this post.
Earlier today, I read a remembrance by someone who's about my age. She said that when she was in elementary school, she made friends with another girl and invited her home one day -- and her mother ordered the friend to leave, then beat the crap out of the daughter because the friend was Black and she'd brought her into their house and don't ever do that again.
Which reminded me of a similar incident in my own childhood. Although mine was, thankfully, less violent.
This would have been in the mid to late '60s. Our neighborhood was white, but there were some houses along the railroad tracks where some Black families lived. Of course we all went to school together (and our neighborhood got shifted from one elementary school to another, depending on which school needed more Black kids that year, but I digress). I knew the kids by sight -- we all rode the same bus, after all -- although I didn't hang around with them.
One day, one of the little Black girls ventured into our neighborhood. We ended up playing together in my yard, and at one point we decided to go inside. And my mother threw a fit. She told the girl to leave and told me I was never to bring any Black kids home again, ever.
Well, she didn't use the word "Black". This was the '60s, after all.
Anyway, the girl was nice, and I didn't understand what the color of her skin had to do with anything. I was too young then to give voice to my thoughts, and of course I was a good girl and obeyed my parents. But my belief that we are all human, and therefore worthy of respect, may have been born that day.
The hell of it is that my father had built our house with help from my uncle John, who was a carpenter, and Mr. Farmer, a Black man who lived in one of those houses along the railroad tracks.
A Black man was good enough to build our house, but a little Black girl couldn't be allowed inside to play? How crazy is that?
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Later on, when my own kids went to school and learned about Black History Month, they practically yelled at me: "Why didn't you tell us any of this?"
What, that Black folks were different from white folks? It never occurred to me. When I was a kid, I'd learned that "different" meant bad. I thought the idea was to treat everybody the same, because we are all the same. We're all human beings.
That's what equality means to me still. I want to learn about our differences, sure, but I want to celebrate them. I want to honor everyone's stories and all the heroes from every culture. I want us all to be proud of each other.
Pie in the sky? Maybe so. But we can't get there if we don't dream it first.
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These moments of bloggy conflict resolution have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Blessed Imbolc and happy Black History Month, too.
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