Sitting here in my hotel room in Dublin, Ireland – I find myself writing this post for the second time. The first time, I had written it in an app on the iPad, and started to copy and paste it to the WordPress web site. Unfortunately, I didn’t hit the key combination that I thought I had, and lost the post. So, I will try to re-piece it again today.

I do not do the New Year’s resolution. Not even during Samhain. I do; however, make agreements with Gods and Goddesses to work towards Their means. My Three that I work with the most are Coyote, Crow, and Fliodhas. Coyote has always asked me to step forward on my Path, but by being far less serious about myself than I have been. I have learned that to some degree; even to the point of poking fun at myself. Ritual work, spell work, even just living out one’s day does not have to be something completely serious. Of course, humor does not always translate well from one individual to another, which probably lends to how some people find me to be so ‘odd’. Crow has been typically in the area of communication – particularly in communicating to other solo Pagans that they are not alone in some of the things that they go through. I have been on a Pagan Path of some sort or another since 1986. That means I am starting my thirty-first year as a Pagan. In my first twelve years, I was completely convinced that only a Pagan working with a group could truly be a Pagan. When I started hearing so many folks saying the same thing, even when I finally understood that a Pagan didn’t need a group to be a functioning Pagan of any sort…I realized that a lot of people needed to hear what I had to say on that count. Thanks Crow. 🙂

So here I am. In Ireland. The island where Fliodhas – the Irish Goddess of the forests – is. I am where She is. She has let me know it quite well. She has shown Herself in so many ways, in so many places. In Killarney, She showed herself everywhere. In the forest, I could see Her within every tree, within every deer that we saw, every fox that skittered away from our horse-drawn carriages. Away from the forests, I hear Her soft, high-pitched giggles in the crowded shopping areas we have visited. On our trip around the Ring of Kerry, I felt Her soft caress in every bone-jarring blast of cold wind off the Atlantic ocean. In my dreams, I have sat and listened to Her quietly talk about Her love of the island. And I nodded slowly when She mentioned that there was something that needed to be done by me – if I wanted to. I still do not know exactly what She is going to want from me coming into the next year, but I said yes. All I can do is wait.

2016 has been a rough year, particularly on the folks with Bardic talents. So many of these folks have passed beyond the veil during the calendar year. And with the election of Donnie as President of the United States; there seems to be a lot of distress and a sense of impending doom among many folks. Certainly, Donnie merits watching as President, but hopefully there won’t be that much political damage to correct within the next four years. Certainly there will be battles to be fought, and certain hate groups have bubbled back to the surface, but we can survive this Storm together. And the passing of many Bardic talents means that many more will need to step forward. Their voices, their presences will be at the forefront of how we handle some of the issues of our day. The Arts have always been the voice that drives the narrative. We will find those voices to replace the David Bowies, the Princes, the Carrie Fishers, and all of the others that have stepped beyond the veil. We patrons of the Arts, we need to not only find these new voices, these new personas, these new storytellers – we also need to support them. That is what 2017 will bring us.

Let’s not sprinkle moon-dust on everything and proclaim it beautiful though. The Storm is here. We need to help protect one another from the coming deluge. But in doing so, we can find beauty in who we are – as a human race. Not divided by skin, eye or hair color. By height, weight, sex, gender, or creed. There’s no moon-dust in all of that, ya’ll. There’s an understanding that the only divisions that keep us apart…the only divisions that keeps us from finding solidarity within each other….those divisions are created by, and perpetrated by us. And we have the ability to not let this continue.

So, I’m not here to make a New Year’s Resolution. But I am here to tell you that we – together – are the solution to all of this. We just have to believe in that. Believe in ourselves. And I believe we can do that. I truly do.