I Lit a Candle for Three Hours and Asked One Question
What Imbolc teaches about paying attention to what is not yet born
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about what it shifted in you.
Last night I lit a candle and let it burn for three hours.
I was not meditating. I was not praying, at least not in any formal sense. I was sitting with the ReWilding the Soul EcoSpirituality Certificate syllabus spread across my desk, the document I have been drafting for months, the one that needs to be simplified and shared with students by the end of this week.
I kept returning to one question: How do I invite people into something that sounds simple but almost no one actually does?
This is the paradox I sat with while the candle burned.
EcoSpirituality is not complicated. It is not rocket science. The practices I teach are neither secret nor hidden, nor do they require initiation to understand. Sit outside. Listen. Notice what is around you. Pay attention to the more-than-human world as if it were alive, because it is. Recognize that you are not separate from the Earth but part of it.
Simple. Obvious, even.
Yet, almost no one I have ever met is already doing this.
What Imbolc Revealed
Imbolc is the Celtic threshold between deep Winter and the first stirring of Spring. The word means “in the belly.” It refers to the lambs quickening in the ewes, the first movements felt as new life grows within. Not birth. Not spring. The quickening that precedes spring.
Life is moving in the dark, invisible but undeniable.
I did not plan for my question to align so perfectly with the season. But sitting there last night, candle burning, syllabus open, I realized I was asking an Imbolc question.
What is quickening in me that has not yet been born?
The answer is this program. The answer is also the retreat I am planning for September. The answer is the solitary Camino walk I will take in May. The answer is the Camino packing list offering I am finishing. All of it is stirring. None of it has fully emerged.
Underneath all of it is the same invitation I want to extend to others: sit down, be quiet, and listen to what is already alive around you.
The Gap Between Knowing and Doing
Here is what I have learned from five Camino walks, from years of studying ecospirituality intellectually before it finally started to become embodied practice, from watching students and seekers struggle with the same gap I struggled with:
We know we should slow down. We know nature is good for us. We know we spend too much time on screens and not enough time outside. We know, we know, we know.
Knowing does not create relationship.
Relationship requires presence. Presence requires showing up. Showing up requires making a choice, again and again, to sit down and listen to something other than our own thoughts.
This is not complicated. But it is rare.
The people I meet who are actually in relationship with the Earth, who feel the land as kin rather than backdrop, who grieve when a tree is cut down because they knew that tree, who notice when the birds change their songs because they have been listening long enough to recognize the difference, these people did not get there by reading about ecospirituality.
They got there by sitting down and listening.
The Simplest Invitation
So here is what emerged while the candle burned.
The Rewilding the Soul syllabus does not need to be more sophisticated. It does not need more frameworks or more readings or more complexity. What it needs is the courage to say the obvious thing that almost no one does:
Sit somewhere outside, or near a window if outside is not possible. Be still. Listen. Not to achieve anything. Not to check a box. Not to become more spiritual, more connected, or more enlightened.
Just to begin a relationship.
Find a spot. Return to it. Let the land get to know you as you get to know it. Notice what you hear. Notice what you see. Notice what shifts in you when you stop performing productivity and simply attend to what is already there.
This is a sit spot. It is an ancient practice dressed in modern language. Indigenous cultures have known this for millennia. Naturalists rediscovered it. EcoSpirituality names it as what it is: the beginning of kinship.
You sit. You listen. You return. Over time, you become known to the place and the place becomes known to you.
What Is Quickening in You?
This is Imbolc. The light is returning, but spring has not arrived. We are in the season of stirring, not the season of blooming.
I do not know what is quickening in you. But something is.
Maybe it is a project you have been circling for months. Maybe it is a relationship that needs tending. Maybe it is a practice you keep meaning to start. Maybe it is grief you have not yet honored. Maybe it is a calling you have been ignoring because you do not yet know how to respond.
Whatever it is, it does not need to be forced into the light. Imbolc is not about birth. It is about noticing what is stirring.
The practice I offer you this week is the same practice I am building the entire Rewilding the Soul program around:
Find a spot. Sit. Listen.
Not for answers. For relationship.
The Earth has been waiting for you to show up. It does not require anything fancy. It just requires your presence.
A Practice for This Week
Choose a place you can return to. It does not need to be wilderness. A park bench. A backyard corner. A fire escape with a view of the sky. A window that faces a tree.
Go there three times this week. Sit for ten minutes each time. Do not bring your phone. Do not bring a book. Do not bring an agenda.
Just sit. Just listen. Just notice.
That is all. That is the whole practice.
If you want to go deeper, write down one thing you noticed after each sit. Not an insight. Not a lesson. Just one thing you noticed that you would not have noticed if you had not been sitting there.
This is how relationship begins. This is what is quickening.
This is the foundation of EcoSpirituality. It is what we will explore together in Rewilding the Soul, the year-long EcoSpirituality Certificate I am offering through Cherry Hill Seminary beginning in March. If you want to go deeper with guidance, community, and structure, I invite you to learn more.
But whether or not you ever take a course, you can begin today.
Find your spot. Sit. Listen.
The Earth is already speaking. The question is whether we are quiet enough to hear.
Walk With Me
If this resonates, I invite you to subscribe to Where Insight Meets Earth, my weekly reflections on contemplative walking, ecospirituality, and embodied practices for navigating what overwhelms us
In September 2026, I am leading a contemplative walking retreat on France’s ancient Le Puy Camino. Seven days of walking in presence on a 1,000 year old pilgrimage path. Only 4 participants. Private rooms for everyone. Every accommodation directly on the path where pilgrims have walked for centuries. Silence as practice, not punishment. If you are curious about what contemplative pilgrimage might offer you, details are here.
If you want to delve more deeply into this, I am launching the Rewilding the Soul EcoSpirituality Certificate at Cherry Hill Seminary in March 2026, a year-long journey exploring Earth kinship through contemplative practice. Learn more here.
Love this practice challenge and started with a palm tree beside the Pacific Ocean today in Mexico! Going back to the snow in Ontario tomorrow (boooo) so will find a spot there to practice 2 more times this week! Thanks for sharing Jeffrey 🤩