To connect. To converse. To respond. To listen. To silence.

Through poetry.

For the first time in at least two years - possibly more - my family and I made crosses for St. Brigid's Day last night.

"Possibly" hints in quantum ways at the differences that we might infer from this emerging post-pandemic period and our lives before 12 March 2020. In the year or two before 2020, I am almost sure that we did not make it to my in-laws to make the crosses. And while we were disappointed, we did not worry too much because we figured there would always be next year.

March 2020 - and the following Christmas in particular - were brutal blindsides from the Universe that there may not always be a next time. We are lived long enough and have experienced grief to understand that lurking fact all too well. But Covid stretched our familiar connections across mountains and valleys that had sprung up like the miraculous village which is the center point of the Disney film "Encanto".

So we might possibly take the view now - as places of gathering open fully and without restriction - that we should party like its nineteen-ninety-nine. Waste not a minute and go all out in catching up with extended family and friends. Learn from the mistakes we made in the pace of life we adopted in the time before 12 March 2020.

We could do that.

Or we might possibly reflect a little longer on all that has happened over the past two years. We have all suffered in different ways and at different times - hugely varying levels of anxiety; serious illness; loss of loved ones. Yet like the spiderweb that always seems to come within reach of the hero's friend at just the right time, as I reached out to friends and family via whatever means were available over those two years, I found many people reaching right back.

Sure, it was not the same as being in a pub with a few pints in the middle of a mighty session. But we connected - we had long and wandering conversations; we hosted book clubs where the book was discussed in about 10 mins - and then we got back to the real business of long and wandering conversations; we read poems that meant something to us in those times and talked about how they landed in our hearts; we answered table quiz questions about photos from the family vault.

Sometimes the broadband would wobble; sometimes it would go altogether. And we found that invariably, we would work our way back to each other, come what may.

Very much as we are beginning to do now. We may have cursed the quality of the broadband more often than we cared to remember. But then eventually we came to understand a lot more about the Stoic approach to life - really reflecting on those things that we control and the many things that we do not.

As we sat down to make the crosses last night, I discovered that I had forgotten a lot more than I thought about the method of making the crosses. And eventually, by persisting and listening and observing, I re-awoke the skills and made a few.

In the run up to the Millennium celebrations in 1999, I recall a building frenzy as people planned a big night out on the town to mark the new millennium (even if it wasn't for another year!). And I also recall a building response where many people decided to stay in with small groups of family and friends and mark the threshold with the people they held most dear. My now wife and I travelled in my first car - Fiat Uno - half-way across the country to be with my family that night. We persisted through a flat battery, two AA call-outs and a night in a B and B because the lights had gone completely and I could not keep going in the dark.

We rested, made the most of where we were for however long we were there. And eventually, the sun rose and we made it to where I grew up.

St. Brigid's Day will be an annual bank holiday from next year. It's the beginning of Spring; a day marking the story of a most remarkable leader. If all we take is the story of how Brigid's cloak covered the ground for her monastery, we might take hope that no matter how small and narrow things may seem, we are far more capable than we often give ourselves credit for.

I saw it last night as our ever-growing daughters all made their own crosses in their own ways. My wife and I recalled how in each of their earlier years, they would get very frustrated very quickly as they tried to master the technique. And yet they kept coming with us to my in-laws - and they kept trying.

Even last night, one daughter delighted in how her first cross went so wrong that it resembled a spider's web. And so she made two more and named them each in honor of the three actors who have held the role of Spider Man in the last 20 years!

Brigid's cross is a most unusual and striking pattern. It clearly is a cross but not quite either. And that asynchronous difference evokes a most arresting beauty. My wife taught me that a key part of the technique is binding each rush that you have just placed with the next one - hold tightly and support quickly; turn and repeat until the pattern and the cross takes hold. And like a tree, the newest, the youngest part of the cross is always on the edge.

Somewhat ironically, the last thing we associate rushes with is the idea of rushing.

And so faced with the endless possibilities of tomorrow - and the day after that - rather than rushing headlong into them from a seared sense of fear of missing all that we missed before, we might spread our cloaks beneath our own feet; take time to sit down with those around us; hold tightly those who need our love and support for however long is necessary; carefully place further supports of love in and around them; and thereby fashion into existence from the whole of our living beauties that only we have previously imagined.

And through all this, anchor ourselves in the here and now, and spark the next swirls in our uncertain course through the cosmos.

Tomás Ó Ruairc 30 January 2022

I don't speak because I know that something is true. I speak because I hope and know that authentic conversation between us will unveil the sense of Truth a little more. Tomás (Inspired by the writings of Mark Nepo)