In February of 2021, students embarked on their second plant attunement with the school.  This was a unique attunement in that we worked with three plants and the goddess of Imbolc, Brigid.  At the end of this attunement, students wrote closing prayers to Brigid and to Dandelion, Oatstraw, and Rosemary.  

It feels good to come full circle and share some of the magic of our first Imbolc season together here as we approach the end of this round of the CHP program.  It has been two years exactly since these closing prayers were written and the lineage has moved through two additional Imbolc seasons together.  How sweet it is to reflect on our precious beginnings!  So much devotion was held by our pilgrims from the start to open to the plants and other lineage keepers despite what could be painful or uncomfortable in the beginning.  There has been so much Grace held in the reciprocity of giving and receiving.  

The following prayer was written by Song of Sophia Certified Healing Practitioner Cherstaria Crystal-Lynn after her second plant attunement through inspiration and reference by the course content and transmission of the school.    

February 28, 2021

Plants of the triple goddess, Brigid: Dandelion, Oatstraw and Rosemary.

Thank you. This was hard and scary and felt impossible a lot of times. And I’m still grateful. 

Dandelion, thank you for teaching me about my body and yours. How your flowers provide life to other living things like the bees. Your body provides food and cleansing. Your seeds inspire wishes, magic and joy. Your roots go so deep and you hold onto this earth with all your might. You are a master of the earth and yet you release your beauty to the wind, trusting that you will be planted next wherever you are needed and then you throw your roots down again. You allow yourself to be consumed, eradicated, sprayed away and yet you are ever returning with a never-say-die tenacity.

Through you I felt the womb pulse so much more clearly, ever growing. You have helped me to prioritize my body, sleep and sustenance, and I’m still learning how to live that out. I am learning that pushing so hard, and sacrificing myself is harming me. Thank you for helping me to release myself more fully into the earth, beyond just going there mentally or in my mind’s eye. To trust in the letting go. I offer you all the courage, tenacity and trust I can muster. I pray that you continue to root and grow in me. 

Oatstraw, you saw so many tears from me. You encouraged and held me in my grief which was plentiful-about being unlovable, being alone, being wrong, being overwhelmed, being controlled, having no choice. Thank you for teaching me about emotions, about holding. About letting my tears come forth and not stifling them and to keep trusting and reaching out for the mother you say is there to hold me and nourish me. You are showing me where I am holding back out of fear, where I am holding onto feelings and beliefs of inadequacy, where I am closing to care and help and going it alone. I offer you my tears, my emotions, my grief and the love that I am sure is hiding underneath. I caught glimpses of what might be the pulse in my heart (beyond heart beat). I ask that you continue to open my heart and to teach me how to hold with the arms of mother love.

Rosemary, thank you for all the dreams and the vivid lessons and experiences of reckoning, and catharsis that are coming up through them. I feel like you are changing my relationship to dreams and helping me to experience their potency, potential and power in a new way. I feel my trust growing in the wisdom that comes through. I feel myself opening more to messages. I can hear my cranial fluids moving more and more and am getting to know the pulse there. I am starting to feel a strong presence when I call upon the ancestors, and I feel like this might be your medicine as well. 

Brigid, triple goddess, midwife of the veil, the bridge, the bringer of Christ consciousness. Though I couldn’t always distinguish between the individual plants and their gifts, I believe in concert they helped me to attune to you. So, the lessons and blessings I can’t distinguish, I am offering to all three in your name. Even before our opening attunement, you were showing me the importance of honesty even if it means a releasing of control and a subsequent vulnerability and potential loss. I told a truth which I had been holding back despite the risk. May I live more truly in your name. You showed me how I am creating my own experience in reciprocity-through thoughts, through what I allow, through what I own as mine, through what I don’t own or process, through what I allow to remain in the shadows-and how changing these, or recognizing them, questioning them, and setting boundaries can help me to start to break free, part the clouds, clear the mist. 

You helped me to get in touch with the divinity that is available in my family setting-when we sang Mary of the Gaels and did swan shadow puppets on the wall, when I had no other opportunity but to prepare my oatstraw infusions in front of my son and he saw me rooting down to Gaia, when he took deep breaths of oatstraw and rosemary from my plant medicines, when we read his book about ducklings and I received the message that just as the ducks were molting their flying feathers and wouldn’t be able to fly again for a time, I too am in this process. My prayer is that I allow you in during this time of shedding, of molting, and re-organization and transformation, and that when the time eventually comes, that I too can take flight with you, Mary of the Gaels, on swans wings, with fresh new flight feathers-with the hearth fire burning inside me. 

You helped me to get in touch with several important things I needed to remember through biblical scriptures which I used to read after my first experience of Christ consciousness: “give me this day my daily bread.” “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.” “God has not given me a spirit of fear, but of power, love and a sound mind.” I feel that you are showing me that I need to do all of this one day at a time in order to make it through. To take the step in front of me and to release the rest.  

Reckoning. Honesty. Seeing what is. Being open to the fact that “what is” might be more than I realized. Letting go of the fantasy, my creation, so that I might lay hold of the magic here and now, that already is, that is true and light and honest even though it can feel hard to trade for.