Let me be the first to wish you a ‘Happy first day of spring!’ With the temperature hovering around zero outside, rest assured I have not gone off the deep end. Today, February 1st is the first day of spring in the Celtic calendar so why not dream of warmer days to come? It is also the feast day of one of Ireland’s beloved saints, St. Brigid of Kildare. St Brigid, the patron saint of poets, dairymaids, blacksmiths, healers, cattle, fugitives, Irish nuns, midwives, and new-born babies will be celebrated today in small churches in Ireland and some towns in England. She will also be celebrated at Wisdom Ways Center for Spirituality on the campus of St. Catherine here in St. Paul all weekend. Songs will be sung, fires will be lit, poetry read and the welcome mat of hospitality will be out just as Brigid was known to do in her own time. Welcoming one and all to sit, rest, eat and be present to one another in a common spirit.

Growing up as I did, a Protestant girl, I did not learn of Brigid until I was an adult. But the inspiration of her life and her leadership as a woman in the 5th century has been beacon for women and girls and for many men over the centuries. In the fall I had the privilege of visiting the church that had at one time been a part of Brigid’s monastery. This center of faith was a place of learning and sanctuary for the poor, the lost, the pilgrim and the refugee. Brigid was truly a woman ahead of her time and yet her prominence in the church of her day shows that things were not always as hierarchical as they later became.

Helping the gathered to celebrate St. Brigid’s day this weekend will be three Irish singers whose voices I find spellbinding. Noirin Ni Riain and her sons Owen and Moley O’Súilleabháin will offer fine Irish traditional singing of both sacred and popular song. There is something incredibly powerful about what happens when voices with the same DNA sing together, isn’t there? It is often difficult to hear where one voice starts and the other stops. It is as if they are singing from one common voice, moving in and out in some mysterious way. This is the gift these three bring. They will also be offering their music at both 9:00 and 11:00 at Hennepin Church on Sunday.

For some it might seem strange to celebrate and make such a fuss over a woman who lived so long ago, whose story is a mixture of shadowed fact and myth. And yet, it seems, there are many who find some deep connection with a story that reminds us of the power of acts of kindness, goodness and faith. Brigid, who it is said, always opened the door and spread a feast for the mighty and the downtrodden, can still place the mirror before our own faces. How are we offering hospitality to the stranger and to the friend? How are we caring for the least among us, even those nonhuman ones who walk in the world with their vulnerability always before them?

Outside the church of St. Brigid in the tiny town of Kildare, is a sunken place with walls of stone thought to have been her chapel. It is a small space, not the place for entertaining large parties. But as we gathered around it on a sunny, Irish day, there was a sense of her presence that still welcomed the far flung visitors of today. She might not recognize her little village. But something simmered in the air there. I like to think her spirit was still hoping to light a fire of hospitality, learning and beauty in all who pass that way and are able to see.

This weekend I will remember the gifts of this saint who only showed up for me when I was past an impressionable age and yet has made a place in my heart anyway.

Brigid of the Mantle, encompass us,
Lady of the Lambs, protect us,
Keeper of the Hearth, kindle us,
Beneath your mantle gather us,
And restore us to memory.