February 1 is the day St. Bridgid of Ireland is celebrated. This was one more phenomenal woman! Born in 451 or 452, she was a woman of great learning, artistic ability, and compassion. She founded the first convent in Ireland (which included both men and women.) She was designated a Bishop. She founded a school of art famous for its illuminated manuscripts and metalwork. She also founded a center of learning and spirituality famous all over Europe. She lived to be 71 years old, dying on February 1, which is now St. Bridgid’s feast day. In Ireland apple cake and apple dumplings are a favorite on this celebration day.

St. Bridgid of Ireland

We have dear friends in Derry, Northern Ireland, who continue the custom of the family sitting down on the night of January 31 and making a St. Bridgid cross out of straw. On the morning of February 1, the new St. Bridgid cross is put over the door in the kitchen (or over the front door) where it stays for the coming year until the next Feb. 1 when it is replaced with a new cross the family has made.

There are wonderful legends and folktales about Bridgid. My favorite is this:

Once on the way home she got caught in a rainstorm, getting soaked to the skin. Because of poor eyesight, when she took off her clothes in her room, she mistook a ray of light coming in the window for a clothes hook and hung all her wet clothes on a sunbeam where they stayed until they dried.

Such stories are, of course, fanciful…and at the same time they carry in them the seeds of respect and honor with which the real Bridgid was held by those around her. Evelyn Underhill has said that a saint is simply a human being whose soul has grown up to its full statue, by full and generous response to its environment which is God. A saint has achieved a deeper, bigger life…a more wonderful contact with the Mysteries of the University, a life of infinite possibility, the term of which a saint feels will never be reached.

	St. Bridgid’s Cross

All of us probably know one such saint. Someone who has a “deeper, bigger life…a more wonderful contact with the Mysteries…and a life of infinite possibility.” All of us can imagine ourselves growing little by little into being this kind of saint…someone who wants her soul to grow to its full stature.

So, in honor of all the saints we know (Think “When The Saints Go Marching In” played by a New Orleans jazz band–who would be in that march from your life and experience? Those are the kinds of saints we are talking about here!) and in honor of the the saint we’d like to be…our souls growing and our life full of infinite possibility…let’s celebrate all month long this amazing woman, Bridgid of Ireland!

You might even make an apple cake!

Love,

Apple Cake’s in Honor of St. Bridgid

In honor of St. Bridgid, who’s feast day traditionally involves apple cake, the e-mail newsletter asked for your apple cake recipes. And the recipes are coming in. Get the recipes and start baking!

Dr. Elizabeth Harper Neeld offers wisdom and practical insights to anyone whose life is in a time of transition, change, grief and loss of any kind. As an internationally recognized and accomplished consultant, and author of more than twenty books - including Tough Transitions and Seven Choices: Finding Daylight After Loss Shatters Your World - she is committed to work that helps lift the human spirit.