On Fire

I've been wanting to get more witchy in my blogging, and now I easily can.  I found Pagan Blog Prompts a couple of weeks ago, and this is the first time I've gotten brave enough to use it.  The current prompt is: 

"Extreme Temperatures

For a lot of Pagans, worship and rituals take place outside when at all possible. What about when the weather is just too hot or too cold to do anything outside? How do you connect with nature when you can't be out in it?"

I have always, always, ALWAYS hated the heat.  Growing up in South Texas will do that to you.  (I used to hate sunny days, too, and for the same reason, but four years in BC's Lower Mainland cured me of that.)  This hate/hate relationship with hot weather never used to bother me, but then I found my true Path.  Now I feel guilty about how I see heat.  After all, Wicca is a nature religion, right?  And it's all about balance, right?  Yeah.  And here I am, dreading the next six weeks or so.

But I do realize that guilt is a Christian concept.  I shouldn't feel guilty about it, I should learn from it.  And so I'm trying.  I'm trying to get out and do more "summery" things--sit out on our makeshift patio, crawl out of the air conditioning and take a walk in the "lovely" heat, grow things in the garden, etc.  I'm trying to relearn how to dress as efficiently for the heat as I used to when I was a kid growing up without air conditioning.  I'm trying to not think of THE SUMMERLANDS as an absolutely dreadful place.

What about cold, you ask?  Cold has never been a problem.  I've always LOVED the cold.  Even if you can't perform a ritual skyclad in it, you can always add enough layers to go out in it.  Again, it goes back to my roots in South Texas--where I only experienced any degree of cold at all a handful of days a year.  My birthday is in January, and I HATED celebrating it in shorts.  I love living here in Ontario, where we get a REAL winter, with snow and everything.

But heat.  Ah, heat.  I am getting better.  I don't hate it as much as I used to.