Feb 8, 2026

“Burning Inside, Not Burning Out”

Rev. Kurt Hohmann

Embodying Resilience

  • Imbolc
    • Sits awkwardly between deep winter and obvious spring
      • Nothing looks resolved yet
    • The world is changing in places no one can see
    • A time of persistence before proof
      • Seeds swelling underground
        • Doing crucial work invisibly
      • Lactation beginning before lambs are born
        • Nourishment prepared in advance of need
      • Fire not as blaze, but as banked coals
        • Kept alive through winter
    • Movements, like seasons, have winters
      • Winter work matters
    • People resisting sometimes despair that nothing is working
      • Imbolc says, “This is not failure; this is just the slow part.”
  • Resilience: Strength in what is small and hidden
    • Resilience is not the loud part
      • Often doesn’t look like marching or chanting
      • Sometimes looks like continuing to exist, care, and hope
        • Even when the world gives no immediate feedback
    • Not all resistance is confrontational
      • Forms of resistance that don’t make headlines
        • But make movements survivable
      • Mutual aid
      • Rest
      • Tending relationships
      • Learning skills
      • Staying morally awake
  • Embodying Resilience
    • In addition to resisting unjust laws, systems, or leaders, we resist demands to disconnect from our bodies
      • Stay present instead of dissociating
    • Systems of power try to set the tempo
      • Constant breaking news
      • Moral emergencies
      • Rapid-response outrage
      • If we match that pace indefinitely, we burn out
    • Breathing is a refusal of imposed tempo
      • When you can breathe, you can think
      • When you can think, you can choose
      • When you can choose, you remain human
    • The nervous system as battleground
      • Fear vs. regulation
      • Panic vs. grounded action
      • A body that can rest is harder to control than one constantly afraid
    • Rest is not acceptance
    • Fatigue is feedback, not failure
      • A sign of caring, not weakness
      • It happens from giving energy, attention, or love to something that matters deeply
      • Giving outpaces replenishing
      • Indifference and apathy don’t exhaust themselves
      • We tire because we care
    • Fatigue does not mean:
      • You are not tough enough
      • You are not radical enough
      • You are not disciplined enough
      • You are not spiritually strong enough
    • Retreat is sometimes part of advance
  • Communal Resilience
    • Resistance collapses when we believe we must be heroic alone
      • The danger of martyrdom culture
    • Resilience is a distributed property of community
      • The sacredness of saying, “I can’t today,” and being answered with, “Then rest.”
      • “I will carry this with you.”
    • No single flame lights the world
      • But many small flames prevent total darkness

Stories

  • Demeter
    • Demeter is the goddess of grain and harvest
    • Persephone, daughter of Demeter, is gathering flowers when the earth opens and Hades takes her into the underworld
    • Demeter hears her daughter’s cry
      • She searches everywhere, across land and sea
      • She refuses to eat
      • She refuses to rest
      • She carries torches and wanders the world in grief
    • Zeus, Persephone’s father, has consented to the abduction
      • No one tells Demeter
    • When she learns what has happened, she:
      • Does not storm Olympus
      • Does not plead
      • Does not accept
      • Simply withdraws her gift
        • Crops fail
        • Seeds do not sprout
        • The earth grows cold
        • Humanity begins to starve
    • It is not that Demeter cannot grow grain
      • It is that she will not
    • Compromise
      • Persephone will spend part of the year below and part above
      • When Persephone returns, Demeter allows the earth to bloom again
      • The seasons result
    • Demeter’s grief is not quiet
      • She does not accept what has been done
      • She does not “trust the process”
      • She withdraws her gifts
    • Winter happens because she refuses to cooperate
      • With injustice
      • With a system that treats her daughter as expendable
    • Demeter does not break the world
      • She reveals what the world depends on

Demeter’s Protest

  • The gods intervene only when:
    • Crops fail
    • Humans starve
    • Sacrifices cease
    • Normal operations are disrupted
  • Power ignores grief until grief interrupts the economy.
  • Demeter’s resilience is not passive endurance.
    • It is sustained refusal.
    • It is not cheerfulness.
    • It is moral clarity.
  • Demeter embodies the moment when love says “No.”
    • To harm.
    • To abduction.
    • To the casual use of power.
  • Her winter is not weakness.
    • It is protest.
    • Anger and grief are sacred.

Burning Inside, Not Burning Out

  • Righteous refusal can become self-consuming fire.
    • How do we hold onto Demeter’s moral clarity without letting the world freeze—or ourselves collapse?
  • Winter, left untended, can become total.
    • Demeter’s refusal nearly destroys everything, including what she loves.
  • Imbolc does not end Demeter’s winter.
    • It marks the moment when the ground remembers what it is capable of.
    • The soil is still cold.
    • Loss is still real.
    • And yet… something stirs.

Brigid: Embodied Resilience

  • Brigid embodies resilience through:
    • Fire
      • Inspiration.
      • Justice.
      • Refusal to go numb.
    • Water
      • Healing.
      • Grief.
      • Adaptability.
    • Craft
      • Skill.
      • Patience.
      • Repetition.
      • Not just endurance, but skillful endurance.
      • Fire that warms without burning out.
      • Water that yields but also erodes stone.
  • Craft as resistance.
    • Doing something well and carefully in a culture of haste and harm.
    • Authoritarian systems depend on exhaustion and despair.
    • Craft, beauty, and care are not distractions from resistance—they are counter-practices.
  • Brigid’s perpetual flame.
    • Associated with Saint Brigid at the Church of the Oak in Kildare.
    • Tended continuously by a community of women.
    • Burned without being diminished.
    • Likely has pre-Christian roots connected to the goddess Brigid.
  • Her fire is:
    • Contained.
    • Guarded.
    • Sustained.
    • Communal.
    • Not wildfire, but hearth fire.
  • Brigid’s fire symbolizes:
    • Continuity.
    • Inspiration.
    • Protection.
    • Sacred presence.
  • It is not:
    • Conquest.
    • Spectacle.
    • Martyrdom.
    • Exhaustion.
  • It is disciplined, sustainable devotion.
    • It does not try to melt the whole winter in one night.
    • Instead it says:
      • “Spring will come.”
      • “But tonight, we keep each other warm.”

Braiding the Stories

  • Demeter is the winter we create when we refuse injustice.
    • Brigid is the flame we keep so refusal does not destroy us.
  • Demeter teaches that grief can change the world.
    • Brigid teaches that tending can sustain the griever.
  • Demeter is the power to withdraw life.
    • Brigid is the power to bank the coals.
  • Demeter shows us when to say “No.”
    • Brigid teaches us how to endure.
  • Demeter shows us that change cannot be undone.
    • Persephone returns—but not fully.
    • The world does not go back to “before.”
    • Justice is partial.
    • Loss leaves a mark.
    • The seasons are the scar of grief.
    • Demeter does not “get over it.”
      • She learns to live with what cannot be undone.
      • Resilience is adaptation, not erasure.
  • Resilience is the rhythm between fierce refusal and careful tending.

Embodied Application

  • Demeter lives:
    • In our anger.
    • In our “enough” when harm is normalized.
    • In the exhaustion of refusing to accept “this is how things are.”
    • In every person who steps back rather than participate in injustice.
  • Brigid lives:
    • In our breath.
    • In our rest.
    • In our craft.
  • Demeter disrupts systems.
    • Brigid sustains people.
  • If we live only in Demeter:
    • We burn out.
  • If we live only in Brigid:
    • We may adapt to what should not be tolerated.
  • Hold the burning inside—but don’t burn out.

Closing

  • Imbolc sits at the seasonal hinge.
    • Winter has not ended.
    • Spring has not arrived.
    • Demeter is still negotiating.
    • Brigid is still tending.
  • Demeter and Brigid sit on opposite sides of the same threshold.
    • One embodies the refusal that creates winter.
    • The other embodies the fire that survives within it.
    • We need to find both within ourselves.
  • We are allowed to be winter.
    • We are required to keep the fire.
  • Let your grief refuse what harms the world.
    • Let your inner flame keep you human while you do.
  • Resilience is not:
    • Endless endurance.
    • Emotional numbness.
    • Winning at all costs.
    • Sacrificing ourselves to prove a point.
  • Resilience is:
    • Staying human.
    • Staying connected.
    • Staying capable of love and anger at the same time.
  • At Imbolc, we do not ask whether spring is guaranteed.
    • We ask only whether we will keep the fire alive long enough to meet it.

Embodied Resilience Practice

  • Place a hand on your chest and feel warmth and breath.
  • Focus on:
    • “What is quietly growing in me?”
  • Remember:
    • Demeter’s grief constricts the world into winter.
    • Brigid’s fire warms it.
    • Breath is the small inner fire.
    • Not a blaze, but a glowing coal.
  • Take a deep breath.
    • It counteracts the body language of defeat.
    • It doesn’t solve injustice.
    • It keeps you from collapsing under it.