I was sitting at my desk, enjoying the grey sky morning, when the amazing Lora O’Brien asked the Irish Spirituality group she runs on Facebook, “What one thing you would like to learn about the Dagda?”. It was a question that my mind immediately ran away with. So many things! What archaeological evidence is there? What modern Irish practices and culture resonates with him? What title does he like the best? The list ran long and I was thoroughly enjoying the replies that the question brought up. I started to feel that contented full heartedness that just comes with the Good God. It’s a warm larger than life feeling, it settles in the rib cage and then just expands out. You feel like you could do anything. You feel like anything in the cosmos is possible. You feel like you just climbed a mountain and are looking out on the expanse of the miracle that is nature and all your eye can see. You feel like you want to be at a table full of friends enjoying good food and drink. You feel like if someone challenged your abilities right now you would take that challenge with gusto and laugh heartily. It is about now when this one realizes that she has a Good God at her shoulder, while looking at the several people all asking to know how to connect to him.
It’s not really a conversation. It’s all feelings and impressions but my tiny little mortal mind takes it all and makes it into a story format that my limited consciousness can understand. So bear with me gentle reader, what I write below is not literally what happened, but then again…it is:
Sitting as inconspicuously as possible at my very conspicuous desk in a very standard office, I let the large comforting and uplifting feelings of the Good God wash over me as I read the responses and think more on my plans for this weekend in the woods, making a mental note to buy him a large Guinness.
“You should write about how you do things.”
I pause in my typing and general work. I didn’t hear anything, there were no sounds to hear, but I heard it all the same. The feeling on my heart increases, expands, the temperature rises. For a moment I smirk at the idea of hearts growing bigger and the physical, likely dangerous, impact on the human body. The humor is there and so is the strength, settled deep in the chest, in the bones and it has been many months since I have been honored with his presence this acutely. I consider my words, the feelings this small proposal brings up, the doubts, the excuses. None of them are fully formed thoughts and yet the Good God knows them all.
“The work continues on. You aren’t claiming to be anything but yourself. That is enough. You have created a space to share, so share. Others may find their way and more work will be done.”
I breathe deep letting the air fill the caverns of my expanded self. The host of self doubt, of feeling an impostor, of not being enough, remain. I am human and my psyche will always hold these scars, but I will not let them hold me back. I had not been asked to serve for some time. Not in this way. Many things had changed in the course of that time. I had wondered if I would feel this calling ever again or if that path was done.
“It would please me.”
A warm smile blooms on my lips. The path has not gone. It split off but it is as surely mine as it ever was and sometimes a Good God would walk with me. One that was deep, strong and red. One of life and death, of work and play, of love and loss, of the earth and the sky, of wisdom and of foolishness.
For him I will gladly do the good work.
Which, my readers, those of you who have come this far, means that I will be writing a series for the Dagda and posting it here. I already have been given some ideas on how to break things down, and this will really just be explanations of what I do and what has worked for me. Just one version of how this very American, Gaelic Polytheist has practiced Devotion to the Irish God known as the Dagda. Not the end all, or one true way, or how the ancestors did it. Just how I do. That being said, if anyone has questions or something they’d particularly like to know, I would love to hear them!
Learning: Devotional Practice to the Dagda
theprimalheart 
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