Madam, – I support the proposal to rename Archbishop Ryan Park at Merrion Square after Brigit (the Old Irish spelling!).
I have just been in Canada and the US, spreading Brigit’s Cloak through lectures, presentations and celebrations.
Brigit’s traditions are being revitalised by people throughout the world as a lifegiving source of hope and encouragement. In Guelph, Ontario, a new ecology centre was just named – by children’s popular acclaim – after Brigit.
Brigit is non-denominational, pagan, pre-Reformation Christian, and post-Christian. Matronness of poetry, healing and smithwork, she symbolises an Old European tradition of female empowerment and her traditions cultivate a dialectic between the sexes, so badly lacking in the recent centuries of Christian history.
Renaming a city centre park (perhaps Brigit’s Garden?) would begin the process of reclaiming a much neglected facet of our common heritage and signal the potential for a new cultural and spiritual awakening that draws on the past but looks toward the future in a spirit of poetry, healing, and cultivating inner fires of integrity and justice.
With artistic imagination and cultural support, it would also become a powerful attraction for international visitors, just as Brigit’s Garden in Rosacahill, Co Galway has now proven to be. – Yours, etc,