This year’s Valentine’s Day dawned beneath calm and brightening skies following several days of quite wintry weather, our snowiest week of the season. Nearly a foot and a half of snow has fallen in these past eight days keeping me close to home with the pleasurable tasks of monitoring the bird feeders, firing up Penguin now and then (my trusty snow blower) to keep the driveway passable, and simply enjoying the deep country-quiet of my hill-home. Given the strangely mild winters of recent years, this year’s snow-globe beauties are delighting my Earth-loving heart.

Some time in the past year a serendipitous connection on the world-wide-web brought this Celtic blessing to my notice when I saw it on the Facebook time-line of Caitlin Matthews, a Celtic scholar who I have long admired. She offered it as a simple ritual for a morning and evening gift to Mother Earth, suggesting if possible to step outside and quietly say it aloud in your dooryard, your garden, your snowy deck, your front stoop. It didn’t matter a bit how urban or rural the setting, only that you acknowledge the sky above and sense your connection to the sweet earth beneath your feet.

So from all the beautiful and magickal Beings of Lightspring Glen, from me, the Resident-Human, and from Angus and Tiger Lily (the resident felines), here is the blessing as our Valentine to you:

Blessed be the precious and preserving Air

by which we are given Life

Blessed be the precious and preserving Fire

by which we are warmed

Blessed be the precious and preserving Waters

by which we are cleansed

Blessed be the precious and preserving Land

by which we are sustained

Blessed be the precious and preserving Spirit within and around us

Blessed be the precious and preserving Ancestors,

now, then, and to come