Today is post three of my five-part series.  Today I’m starting on my new Gods with Brighid (pronounced Bree-id, She has requested), as She has come through the loudest and clearest.  I’m still learning quite a bit about my newest Goddess, but the thing I know through my personal experience with Her is the brightness of Her heart.  I’m not referring just to Her connection to the many forms of fire, but rather, literally, the light of Her soul.  Have you ever known someone who being around them just made you smile?  You knew that you were one of the lucky ones to call them a friend and even in their sorrow they made the sun seem a little brighter in your life?  I’ve been blessed to know a few people like this in my life and I strive to be like that for my friends.  Well, Brighid is like that for me.  While I have a very Mother/Father connection to Danu and the Dagda, Brighid is like an older sister or a young aunt – old enough to remember clearly when I was a baby and maybe even watched me, but still young enough to be a friend now that I am grown.

It’s a strange way for me to think of a Deity.  Coming from Christianity, the parental relationship between my Gods and myself seems natural; but when Brighid speaks to me She calls me “little sister”.  Now, when She comes to me and we are speaking, it’s so natural that at first it didn’t really occur to me that She was calling me such.  But upon reflection on our talks I realized it and now it seems odd – I am completely comfortable and accepting of the pet name, but I am awed that She would call me such.  And there is the simple fact that my logical mind sees it and says “She is a Goddess, you are no where worthy enough to be called Her sister!”  But then, I am reminded of something I read recently that my Gods all made sure stuck with me – I am as worthy to Them as I am willing to see in myself.  Not that I should place myself on a pedestal (not likely to ever happen as I’m my harshest critic), but I have to know my own worth and accept the honor They bestow upon me.  She calls me little sister because that is the tone of our relationship, at least at present.  It is an honor and I cannot balk from it because I see myself as unworthy.

I have known Brighid for a little over a month and while She has pushed, She has also stepped back to give me room when I need it.  Which has been more than I’m proud to admit, not because They are overwhelming me but because of my insomnia which has been slightly more of an issue of late than it was a few weeks ago.  But still She is there, smiling over my shoulder when I’m ready.  I have come to the realization that She has walked with me every bit as long as Danu and the Dagda – I have a whole page of poetry to prove it.  She is the personification of inspiration, but it’s more than that.  I wrote Pulse in 2008 and They Watch in 2009 and one I thought was nothing more than connecting to the rhythm of the earth and the other spoke of Danu and the Dagda.  Now I know that when I was drawn to Pulse, I was dancing with Her; and when I wrote They Watch I spoke of many Gods and Goddesses, I just wasn’t ready to see Them all.  And now Brighid tells me there are many more stories and poems to be written.  She has ever walked beside me feeding the fire of my imagination; we have ever shared that connection and it’s something that I can look at now and realize that She was reaching out to me a comforting hand long before I was ready to look to even Danu.  It’s humbling to realize that She has been here for me for so long, even though I was unable unwilling to recognize Her.

Brighid is a classical Celtic “triple Goddess”, seen by some as three sisters, all named Brighid, who were the keepers of the flame of inspiration and patroness of poets, the flame of the hearth and patroness of healing and fertility, and the flame of the forge and patroness of smiths.  To me, Brighid is all of these in one (which is an equally Celtic view of the world – three parts to one whole) – when She comes to me as the flame of inspiration, She is not also the flame of the hearth; but when She comes as the flame of the hearth, She is the same Brighid, just with a different purpose and intent.  I hope that makes sense.  I have had a vision of Her striding to me and there was like a “lens flare” and suddenly there was the image of three women, side by side, overlaid over the vision of Brighid, and each was Brighid but slightly different.  Like a crystal catching sunlight and casting out the different individual colors.  Like a working mother will have her work aspect, her mother aspect, her wife aspect, her daughter aspect, her sister aspect, and her friend aspect – it is all the same woman, but she is slightly different to each group of people.  Brighid comes to me as a woman with coppery red hair that flows loose around Her shoulders and with eyes that shine – in Her eyes I see Her father and mine, the Dagda, where both temper and laughter light.  She’s young in appearance, a woman in her 20s/30s whose face isn’t yet lined, but She is wise.

I look forward to watching our relationship unfold over the years.  I am thankful that She has come to me and that I was finally ready to accept Her.