...I wonder if I'm a very good Pagan.

I have a lot of overly-enthusiastic eclectic solitary Cunninghamesque Wiccan friends. One popped on a couple of weeks back to give me the total costs for the stuff I ordered off her website, minus my discount, and oh, by the way, she's got to rush offline so she can rejuvenate herself with her full moon ritual, and what am I doing for the full moon?

Well...nothing, actually. As a GT/CR, I don't really do anything special for any phase of the moon. I had a flametending shift from Monday to Tuesday, and another one coming up from the 12th-13th, and I celebrate Imbolc (Brigid's Day, after all). And Lughnasad, and Beltane, and Samhain. But I've always been edgy about the cross-quarters. Too Wiccanesque?

I suppose it's the last lingering remnants of Catholic guilt about not observing holy days, although, geez, you'd think over two decades would be enough to eliminate that. Not that I was ever that great a Catholic, especially after I hit puberty. Any excuse to skip Mass on weekends, if I could get it past Dad.

And even when I went through my fluffy Wicca phase (it lasted all of ten weeks, maybe?), I was never very observant about the holidays.

Maybe it's just that I think it's more important to view each day as holy. Incense, candles, prayers, offerings for the gods...and trying to make sure that none of the day is wasted with things that might anger them. Does it sound too fluffy to say that I finally came to realize that life's too short to dwell on the negative? Oh, sure, I get mad as easily as the next person, but I finally reached the point where I was able to quit carrying grudges around, to quit harboring hateful paranoid mutterings about the bitch in the next cubicle at work, and so on.

I admit I'm--always--still learning, and refining what I've learned. I know I'll never know exactly how things were done in the 'olden days'. Archaeologists and folklorists and historians have unearthed and translated and learned a lot about the ways of the Gaels, but it's never going to be exactly the same. Best I can do is get as close as possible, neh?

And I suppose it'd help if my friends didn't make me feel unreasonably guilty about not doing anything on holidays I don't even celebrate.