Hello!

Photo from North Shore Dragon Boat Festival

Just popping in quickly to let you know that I'm still here! I haven't given up on this blog yet, I promise :)

This past month has been non-stop busy with working both of my jobs (50 hours a week is FUN! :P), preparing for my best friend's wedding, creating and presenting my first Toxin-Free Body Care session for the the local community, and training for race weekend.

Yes, race weekend! I am part of the inaugural crew of our valley's first all-women's dragonboat team. We've been training since May on dry land and in large voyageur canoes all prepping for this weekend's Dragon Boat Festival! We're a casual social team with a competitive streak, and we're going up against some very experienced crews from out of province and out of country in our division. Needless to say, we've got a long way to go to have half a chance of keeping up with our competition, so we've been training hard. And it doesn't hurt that the very attractive professional coach and event orgainzer has come down from Edmonton to train us either :)

I'll be back after this weekend with some posts, 'til then, Paddles Up!

Not my team :P Photo from ottawacitizen.com

Happy Belated Canada Day!

Summer has been a busy little blogger this week, doing everything under the sun EXCEPT blogging, lol!

Summer (the season) has finally made an appearance in my neck of the woods, and it's here with a vengance! Bright blue skies 3 days in a row, hight 20-ies every day....after all the rain and cold(and snow!) in June, I'm feeling very spoiled. So, when I haven't been working at one of my 3 jobs, participating in flash mobs, training with my dragonboat team, or madly trying to get errands done in my spare time, I've been just crashing outside on the deck with a beer in hand. Ahhhhh....sunshine and beer. Good combination :)

So yes, it's been busy. I started a new position with my company this week which has been interesting and challenging, however I'm still doing some shifts in my old position to help cover until they can find a replacement. In addition to that I'm still working my part-time retail job, so I get the fabulous luck of two weeks straight without any days off! Yay! *Sigh* I know, I know,  I brought it on myself. Just...can I get to complain a little? just a little? Okay. A tiny bit. I'm done now.

I am happy being busy, it's no fun to sit at home and be bored. I just think I've overextended myself a bit of late. I actually ended up sleeping in until 10:30 yesterday. Ten thirty! Unheard of! Usually I'm up by 8am and raring to go. It's just that this summer weather is such a rarity, I can't help but wish I was outside hiking or canoing or something, rather than inside working. Granted, this does mean I get to wear pretty sundresses to work, so it's not such a bad trade-off.

I have a couple of things I want to blog about, most notably the bellydance flash mob that I was in this week, and a thing call "The Modesty Project." I originally read about it on Mrs. B's blog last week, and it's been niggling at my mind ever since. I hope to get those niggly thoughts out on blog-paper soon. For now though, I'm writing this during a quite moment at work, and should probably get back to it. Until next time!

Culturally Catholic

I found this intriguing blog post today while wandering over to Charmed I'm Sure.  Deborah Castellano is an excellent writer -  I found her moral compass article on Witchvox, which of course lead me to her blog, which leads me here. (As an aside, I've been trying to follow her blog for a while now but was being technologically challenged and just couldn't figure out how to do that from my phone. Blogger = not so phone friendly. Glad I finally managed to wander over on a real computer!).

Anyways, Debora wrote this great little piece on doing the Catholicism to Pagan thing, and trying to find peace and balance with your Catholic roots. She brought up this concept of being culturally Catholic, much like people are culturally Jewish though they may not actively practice the religion. It's an interesting concept, and one I had never considered before. I had a roommate in university who had a Jewish background one side of her family, but never practiced as far as I knew. I couldn't understand how she could classify herself as Jewish but not practice that religion, though I knew people did it all the time. A few years down the road, I can now see what she was saying. As Andrew B Watt, one of the commenters on the blog post said, "[It's] like belonging to a particular tribe. Which we do. It’s not necessarily the set of religious obligations we hold to throughout our lives, but it’s the set of rituals and ceremonies we were initiated in, and it’s hard to let go of that."
I had never considered the possibility of this applying to my own heritage - that I could be culturally Catholic and religiously ambiguous.

Unlike Deborah, I don't have nieces and nephews to godparent yet, but I can see this concept as helping me reconcile my faith choices with my Italian Catholic family. It's a way of saying "I respect and honour the values of our family's religion. I do not reject this common bond that is so important in your life. I respect your commitment and your efforts to bring me up to be a upstanding member of our (non-religious) community and society. I accept the values you have instilled in me and will bring them with me as I progress through life, and pass them on to future generations."

Catholicism was such an integral part of my life for the first 18-odd years, it has made me the person I am today. I had a pretty good relationship with the Church, we just differed on certain topics (e.g. birth control) and the priests I was exposed to just seemed out of touch with the world I lived in. My real turning point was when, in confession one day, I told the priest that I didn't agree with the Church on some things, like homosexuality, and he took it as "I'm a lesbian" and started talking vaguely about how we should resist the urges and pray for guidance...he totally missed the mark and wasn't listening to what I had to say. At which point, I stopped making regular efforts to go to church. One misunderstanding priest was obviously not the whole reason, but the trigger. But I'm getting off-topic. Such an important part of one's life cannot be dismissed away by conversion from one religion to another, or even by rejecting religion altogether.

Has anyone else heard of the idea of being culturally Catholic/Christian? How have you been able to integrate that into your identity? I'm intrigued by this idea, and would love to hear input from others.

Whooo boy! It's been a while, eh?

Things have been super busy around my neck of the woods. I think I had about 2 days off of work total for the entire month of May. I have a full-time job as well as a part-time one, and the hours really ramped up last month. I kept meaning to blog every time I saw a good post that I wanted to respond to...it was just a matter of finding the time. Clearly, I didn't. Not to worry though, June is looking a lot less hetic!

Lots of stuff going on around Casa de Summer. I (finally!) started my planter box garden experiments, something I've been meaning to do since the beginning of last summer. For the vast majority of the year, my apartment balcony gets zero sunlight (north facing windows for the win!), but with the sun riding high in the sky and the long days around Midsummer, we do actually get some sunlight from 3pm-7pm. I've been desperate to grow some plants, but didn't know how they'd survive with the lack of sun. They don't get much, but the herbs I've planted aren't dead yet! Actually, the chives are looking quite happy. I wish I could say the same for my shade-loving coleus... out of six, 2 shriveled with in the first week.They were supposed to be the sure bet! Freakin' coleus. I would show you pictures but it's snowing today (SNOWING) and it's just sad.

What else has been going on...I bought a bike (yay green transportation!), joined the local women's dragonboat team, wore shorts, it snowed, wore my winter jacket, cut off most of my hair on a whim (it's so short now!), learned how to install insulation, and got a new full-time job. Oh yes, and the town has been under flood advisories for the past few days. The river has overrun many of its banks and has turned low-lying fields into new ponds. I think I should have bought a canoe instead of a bike...I'd get more use out of it.

Midsummer is just a few weeks away, and I cannot WAIT. As a kid, I loved the long days of summer, but the days are a lot longer here in Alberta than Southern Ontario. It's bright at 4am, and doesn't get properly dark until 10:30 or 11pm. It's really messing with my sleep schedule, so I'm looking forward to the days getting a little shorter. Not a lot shorter, just a little. (Did I mention that in December the sun is barely up by the time I get to work at 8:30am and has already set by 5pm?) It's a matter of extremes out here.

I'm not sure what I'll do to celebrate this year. I really like the sound of a bonfire, but as the fire pits at the rec grounds are currently underwater, that might be a bit soggy still. Smaller risk of forest fire, I guess! I'm the only pagan-y person I know out here, so I might just do a non-pagan celebration with friends that night. Who doesn't love a party? What are your plans?

I plan to get at least 1 more post done in June (ha!), so I shall see you around soon!

May Eve Grumblings

Yesterday, it was bright, warmish, and sunny (for a bit). I even broke out the shorts for the first time all season. Today, there were snowflakes falling as I went into work. Someone explain to me how this is spring again?

This May Eve doesn't feel very May-ey. It's been chilly and drizzly and all together gross. If this keeps up, local Beltane revellers are really going to have to re-think the "getting in on in a field" thing.

Spring fertility my butt...*grumble grumble*

I wouldn't mind curling up next to this, today!

 Hope your Beltane celebrations are significantly more spring-like!

Image Credit

The Pig of Happiness

I saw this video on a friend's facebook feed, and had to share :)

Creator's warning: Watching [this video] is likely to make you a happier person. Sharing it with your friends is likely to make them happier too.

Caught in the middle

There they go. My parents have left for Good Friday service and for the first time in my life I'm not going with them. I feel...happy, no, relieved that there was no fight with my dad about not going to church, but sad that I kind of wanted to go as a sign of respect for my parents and there was the assumption that I wasn't coming. I might have wanted to, you know.

My parents have been in town for a week, they arrived last Friday night (one of many reasons for my recent absence from the blogosphere). Last weekend was Palm Sunday and, being completely worn out from a long work week, little sleep, and hard skiing the day before I had no interest in going. Dad was upset that morning, though I couldn't figure out if that was because I wasn't dressed and ready to go with them or because they were late getting out of the house. They were walking to church, and I think ended up getting lost along the way, after all the directions and consternation. When they returned (I, having spent the hour cleaning with great vigor and having imaginary religious arguments with my father in my head) Dad offered me a palm and I decided it was best to accept it with grace and put it on display.

I've never had a proper talk with my parents about what I believe, or why I've stopped attending Mass. Dad brought it up at the dinner table several years back when I was still staying with them on occasion, and they knew that I was reading a lot of books on witchcraft. It didn't go well. Dad was not pleased with what he saw as my rejection of our family's religion, was unwilling to consider other perspectives, and despite trying to be civil about it, ended up uttering the famous phrase "But the Bible says it (what ever I might be studying) is evil and you'll go to hell!". Needless to say I felt cornered, could not articulate my thoughts, started crying, and Mom (the perpetual mediator) stepped in with the "I don't hear a willingness to listen others' points here, I hear a lot of judging", which made Dad more upset, I left the table and we've never spoken of it since. I've been thinking it's a chat we need to have, but I've never found the right time. Also, I'm still trying to work out what exactly I do believe (e.g. one lifetime or many? Eternal punishment/reward, or we all end up in the Summerlands?)

Which brings me here to this Good Friday. When I'm at home I go to church with my family as a sign of respect for them and the faith that bonded our family together. It was a hugely integral part of my upbringing. Here, out west, an independent adult, I do not go to church. So now here, out west, but with my parents staying with me - what to do? I want to honour and respect my parents, I can relate to the Easter story with Jesus nailed to a cross, dying, and resurrecting much in the same way I can relate to the Pagan stories of people/gods passing into the underworld to re-emerge. I see them all as stories humans created to help them relate to the Great Unknowable. However, would I also not be perpetuating a falsehood - that I consider myself a Catholic? Or worse, that I've become a "C&E Catholic", the likes of whom we looked down upon in church? You could always pick them out, those that did not remember when to sit/stand/kneel or did not know the words to say along with the priest because they only came twice a year. Lazy Catholics - only bothered to show up for Christmas and Easter.

No, I do not want to be seen as one of those. However, neither can I come forth an proclaim myself Pagan of one path or another because I just haven't figured it out yet. I haven't met any particular gods or goddesses (at least not by name), and I feel foolish performing rituals by myself at home. I don't wear a pentacle, but I do talk to trees and birds, and while I don't cast spells, I do know that when I cry out in pain and despair, that comfort will come on the wind. What I am I? I'm an in-betweener, existing the the liminal spiritual places between declared religions.

And thus, as an in-betweener I shall eat no meat today on Good Friday, I shall decorate my home with tulips and daffodils to celebrate the coming of spring, and sit here and keep an eye on the hot-cross bun dough that is rising in the oven while two of the people I love the most mark the decent of their god into the underworld.

...and probably eat some chocolate. Happy Easter, all - however you celebrate!

Somewhere between Paganism and Christianity is this photo.