I promise this is a story and not the start of a cliched joke…
The Jew, the Buddhist, the Wiccan high priestess and the Christian Reverend sat down for an Imbolc ceremony and watched divine moments unfold…
I am the Christian Reverend in the story but, by this point in our unique friendship, I have learned just to trust my Wiccan friend when she invites me to something, because the spaces she creates are always filled with love and a divine spirit. Most of our friendship is spent hiking on the mountain behind her house, where we speak ad nauseam about how we see God and how we find healing, among everything and anything else. She is a spiritual healer and I have found her practices always to be places where I become closer to Jesus and find inner healing and energy. I knew the Imbolc ceremony would be no different.
Imbolc is a gentle, sacred celebration of new beginnings, held around the beginning of August in the southern hemisphere. It marks the midpoint between winter and spring — a quiet moment when the first signs of life begin to stir beneath the cold soil. Imbolc is about the awakening of light and life after the stillness of winter.
Belinda, the Wiccan leader of our ceremony and my best friend, was someone I have grown to trust implicitly in all ways and I have learned I can always trust her when she leads us on a spiritual journey. One of our first connections as friends was when she admitted in a group setting, as we were chatting about meeting new mothers, that she gets nervous when she is meeting people because she is worried that they are going to judge her because she is Wiccan. I shot a look at her instantly, realising my own emotions in her admittance. “Belinda! I feel the same way! I am also jumpy about meeting new parents, because I think they will judge me because I am a pastor!” We shared our first knowing look, with hundreds and hundreds of knowing glances to come. Over the years we have learned that we are both deeply spiritual people who see everything in the world through a lens of experiencing spirituality and connecting with God in the way we understand God. She started speaking to me about a therapeutic experience she could perform called ‘Colour Therapy’ and I kept pushing her off when she asked, just unsure how her spiritual practices would mix with my own. Finally, we got into a discussion about it and she assured me that she wanted me to bring in my own spirituality to the practice and invite my God into my experience. I took a plunge and ended up having three very impactful, profound and deep spiritual experiences in her colour therapy. It was like a deep meditation, prayer and revelation. I truly saw things, learned things and healed from things, all with Jesus, while in those spaces.
So, when Belinda wanted us to do a spring ceremony called Imbolc, I said yes without giving it much thought. It wasn’t until the middle of the ceremony, when my Buddhist friend said surprisingly, “Sarah, it is so beautiful that you are open to experiencing this with us.” I was shocked by her comment, only then realising that many people of my faith background wouldn’t step into a ritual that I was engaged in. We were in the middle of a circle with candles, crystals, flowers, ritual prayers and other symbolism. But for me, I knew that if Belinda was leading a spiritual space, my God and beliefs were welcome there fully. During my time at a Christian college in the USA, I took a class on inter-faith dialogue and it profoundly shaped me. We learned that dialogue between faiths was about looking for holiness in other places and honouring it and learning from it where we witnessed it. I had always longed for inter-faith spaces and now I have begun to see it alive in my world. As I journaled and prayed, I began to set my intentions toward the incoming spring and what I wanted to welcome into my life.
We finished the ceremony, took pictures to remember it and said our goodbyes and thank you. I felt refreshed but rushed into the next task of my very full Saturday that was ahead of me. Almost as though it hadn’t even happened, the chaos of the day and family took over when, in the afternoon, my phone rang unexpectedly. Though I loathe speaking on the phone and hardly ever answer it, the name ‘Amy Roberts’ came on my screen and I immediately picked it up. “Hi Amy, how are you?” I said brightly when I picked up. She immediately spoke with urgency, “No, we aren’t okay, Sarah.” I felt myself get tense with the information immediately. Amy is a dear close friend, with whom I have walked for years in life and ministry in the Ocean View community. I first came to know her as a boisterous teenager who came loudly into our new youth group with a gaggle of her girlfriends. The environment really suited her and her relationship with Jesus Christ deepened. She found a home at our church and with our family. Her family attended the church, so I spent a great deal of time getting to know her mother and older sister too. Now Amy was a young adult, in a long-term relationship, with a son of her own. And she needed my help.
“Sarah, we are here at the hospital with my dad. We thought it was just something small, but it’s bad and they don’t know if he has hours or days to live.” My heart sank at the terrible news, as Amy continued. “We don’t know the number of the Reverend to get in touch with him, so could you come to the hospital and pray with him?” It was clear that Amy was not calling me as her friend but as her pastor. She wanted me to come pray with her father as a sort of ‘last rites’ before he died. While the family was in our local Methodist Church, often in times of death, I would see religious people get pulled into almost a folklore about death and I had been asked to do it many times. “Oh Amy, I am so sorry.” I started to look around at what was happening. I was in the car driving my kids back to our house. I did have small plans in the day, but I knew immediately this was most important. “Okay, Amy, let me just drive home now and figure out my kids; then I will come through.” She heaved a sigh of relief that I could almost feel over the phone. “Oh God, thank you, Sarah. Okay, see you soon. Thank you.” My mind already racing, I said, “Of course, Amy, anything for you.” And we hung up the phone.
The kids had heard the call and my quick change of plans didn’t bother them a bit, as this sort of thing happens in my world occasionally. We all walked into the house and my head spun as I tried to think of next steps. I then realised I could call one of my close friends at the church who would certainly know the family well and could get hold of the Reverend. We chatted for a few minutes and she assured me she would get in touch with the Reverend and have him come to the hospital. Within minutes, she had talked to him and he would make his way within the next couple of hours.
I breathed a sigh of relief. Okay, the ‘real’ Reverend would be coming soon to the hospital and surely that was what they really wanted, right? I was like the substitute, second-rate pastor and, surely, they really wanted the real guy for this important and sacred moment. Maybe I just wouldn’t go? It wasn’t as if they really needed me.
And then something shifted in me and I felt a deep gratitude for the sacred opportunity to serve this family in such a holy moment. No matter why they had contacted me, they had and I needed to open the door to the sanctified moment.
Just that morning with my close friends, the Jew, the Buddhist, the witch and the pastor sat in a circle and created a blessed moment for each other, opening ourselves up to the new that lay ahead of us. And here it was just for me. I decided to say yes to the sacred open door now in front of me. I grabbed my very worn Bible and drove straight to the hospital. My time with the family was terribly sad, as they were extremely distraught. I went into the hospital room with Amy and we sat with her father as I read him some scripture, finding myself in Psalm 23 and then praying for him. He passed away the next day, with his family around him.
The next week I led a memorial service at the church for the family. I felt led, very led, to share Psalm 23 with the family, as I realised I had been prompted towards it on Saturday with their dad, but it was for us to receive while we were still alive and on the earth. Psalm 23:4 says, “Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” This is a common piece of scripture used when someone is on their deathbed, but in studying it more deeply, I recognised that it is for God-followers who are very much in life but recognise that times can be challenging and difficult. This scripture was for us, the living, who needed to move ahead with our lives knowing God walked every step with us.
I truly believe that my sacred Imbolc ceremony was what opened the door for the divine unfolding that happened later in the weekend. I want to invite us, all of us who are from different places in our spirituality and mysticism, to be open for the holy messages in unexpected places and to invite sacred new experiences to unfold all around us. I am so glad I did.
