“I love what you’re writing on your blog. I love learning about transformation. Thank you for what you’re writing. What are you planning to write about next?” —Rick F.

I respond to comments on the blog as quickly as I can. The last sentence of Rick’s email offered me a search that took several days, spiraling around different thoughts, interests, attractions and commitments. Here’s my answer.

Photo Credit: Bogomil Mihaylov, Unsplash

Cross Quarter Imbolc

We are at the Cross Quarter Imbolc, the seasonal turn from Solar Christmastide toward Solar Equinox. Even the weather transforms as snow, rain, sun intermix. Now is when, as I mentioned last year at Imbolc, quoting friend Victoria: “Seeds are jiggling in the ground.” Think of it, all the seeds everywhere come to a moment when they begin to jiggle, break open their seed case, and put down a root. They grow, flower, fruit, create a seedling. Over and over, they embrace their transformations and embed that knowledge in their next generation.

The Celtic Goddess Brigid is celebrated at Imbolc; she is a triple goddess, appearing as maiden, matron, and crone. Instead of the weather groundhog, people look to the snake – a three world creature (under, on, over the earth – up a tree). Brigid’s many aspects include being a brewer, an abbess, a beekeeper, a poet, a smith, companion of the cow with one red ear and milk for all. The Christians call this holiday Candlemas, the year’s blessing of the light for our houses at night. Mary and Joseph are in Jerusalem, under Herod’s nose, naming the child who came to restore and transform. They depart as refugees, leaving their old lives behind them.

This planet’s template is not stability, sureness, satisfaction, simplicity, solidness. Everything is in the process of transforming from what it was, now is, to what it will be. Some seed shells are very hard to crack open, but life keeps trying. What survives to grow has resiliency, the ability to adjust and recover, explore and discover.

Why am I writing about transformation in the first place?

One early comment on the website was about how it reflected several aspects of my life. That had been Three Track Mind’s website designer’s challenge to me: what is the core of all the things you do? Consulting: workplace transformations. Coaching: people transformations Mythology: transformation templates and ancestral wisdom. Writing: characters are not static. Singing: moving sound. Spirituality: My faith is not based in answers but questions: come, let us reason together, and pray for those in, or needful of, a transformation process. I never experienced these aspects of my life as disjointed, for one track always informed the others. But I had never dug down to the root to discover it was the same root with multiple branches.

Currently we are exploring three threads of that root, which I have been writing about in rotation: 

The root under them all is transformation. So one answer to Rick’s question is that I will never stop writing about it because it is at the core of this world in which I live, and so at the center of what I am and do.

What am I planning to write about next? 

It turns out there are short and a long term answers. In Organization this year I’m bringing in Peer Consultation/Peer Review templates and a couple of articles. I am also continuing the series on Conflict at the Edge because conflict is a major transformer, and I want people to be skilled and knowledgeable about what to do so the current conflict goes well. This will probably take a couple of years, because it’s one of my specialities, what I’m known for, and I want you to have all of it in your bones. 

In the Story series we are going to go around the Hero/Heroine’s Journey one more time, but explore ancient and current story examples. Then, in 2023, I’m going to take the booklet you receive when you sign up on the site, last year’s and this year’s blogs, and create a book. After that I have another series: Sacred/Shadow Queen and Sacred/Shadow King. Writing that series will fulfill a promise I made to my mentor and friend, Robert Bly. 

The Nature theme will continue to honor the seasons, but shifting into other dimensions of discovery. This blog is about Imbolc, but less about the history of it and more about the seeds I am planting that are transforming into books, and supplying knowledge, examples, and tools to support all our transformations. 

I want to add blogs about the fourth area of transformation – the Other. How we meet the Other, and how our other-ness is a key to our joint transformation. I am developing how I want to explore that together. There are many kinds of Other-ness.

Photo Credit: Dibakar Roy, Unsplash

Thanks to Rick for the question. It served me as both review and a rededication to bring you the best information I have about how to live here, in this complex, ever-changing planet in a very complicated and critical time. We are each called to our own transformation and only as we do our work will the culture change and the planet as we know it be rescued. As a whole people we are about to marry the Troll – it’s almost the last minute before the marriage of the Hero to the Troll Queen, the Heroine to the Troll under the Bridge. Let us be about becoming what is needed for us to be in this moment, and then at becoming what will be needed for the next turning of the cycle.

Hail, Holy Imbolc, turning of the Wheel. 

Bless the journeymakers setting out for Egypt. 

Hold us each day as we fulfill our potential, 

Ever becoming who we are designed to be.

Please look below for the Comment section, and share your experiences and thoughts.