02/01/2026
🌿Sunday Reflections: When the Light Begins to Return🌿
This coming week holds a rare and meaningful convergence. We arrive at the Full Moon on February 1st while also standing within the sacred window of Imbolc, a cross-quarter festival that marks the halfway point between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox.
The Full Moon is often spoken of as a time of illumination. It brings things into awareness, not necessarily to be fixed or forced, but simply to be seen. Under the fullness of the moon, emotions can rise, clarity can arrive, and truths that have been quietly forming beneath the surface may finally ask for acknowledgement. Full moons do not create these feelings, they reveal what was already there.
Imbolc, on the other hand, is quieter in its wisdom. Traditionally associated with the returning light and the stirring of life beneath frozen ground, Imbolc reminds us that change does not begin with grand movement. It begins invisibly. Seeds swell in darkness long before they ever break soil. The days are still cold, the landscape still bare, yet something essential has already shifted.
Together, these energies invite a powerful reflection.
Not the kind that demands transformation overnight, but the kind that asks us to notice what is waking within us.
This time of year can feel uncomfortable. We are no longer fully resting, yet not quite ready to bloom. The deep stillness of winter has softened, but the momentum of spring has not yet arrived. We find ourselves in between. And many of us struggle in the in-between.
We often tell ourselves that if clarity has arrived, action must immediately follow. That if we can see what needs to change, we should already know how to change it. But nature does not work this way. Awareness does not require urgency. Illumination does not demand immediacy.
The Full Moon may shine its light on what no longer feels aligned, while Imbolc gently whispers, “Not yet. Let it warm.”
There is wisdom in allowing insight to rest. In letting understanding integrate slowly. In trusting that recognition alone is already movement.
So often we rush ourselves through becoming.
We judge the pause as procrastination, the slowness as failure, the uncertainty as weakness. Yet the earth itself is modelling something very different right now. Beneath frozen ground, life is reorganizing. Roots are strengthening. Energy is gathering. Nothing looks different on the surface, and yet everything is changing.
Perhaps this week’s invitation is not to decide, fix, release, or manifest, but simply to sit honestly with what has come into your awareness.
What is beginning to stir within you?
What feels ready to be acknowledged, even if it is not yet ready to be acted upon?
The returning light does not demand that we bloom. It only asks that we turn toward it.
There is no rush. No timeline to meet. No spiritual gold star for being “ahead.” There is only the quiet truth of your inner landscape and the gentle remembering that growth begins long before it becomes visible.
As the moon shines full and the wheel of the year slowly turns toward spring, may you offer yourself patience. May you trust what is awakening within you. And may you honour this sacred threshold, where insight meets incubation, and becoming is still allowed to be soft.
Sometimes the most profound transformation is simply allowing the light to reach you and staying exactly where you are long enough to feel its warmth.
May you be blessed,
Rev. Kim Etherington
