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The month is ending, the moon is new and my Facebook Newsfeed is scattered with declarations of change.  The more I seek to attune myself with the natural patterns and rhythms of the world, the more I realize just how easy that really is.  You see, I used to consider myself a bad pagan.  Not in the good witch, bad witch way, of course. I never tried to harm or manipulate anyone.  My problem was with the calendar.

I am terrible with dates.  I need three calendars and my phone to tell me what day of the week it is.  I don’t remember birthdays or the dates of holidays I’ve celebrated since I was a kid.  It’s ridiculous.  So when I say that I often drew a blank when someone wished me a happy Lughnasadh, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. It made sense, but it didn’t mean I was OK with it.  I wanted to celebrate the seasons and the Solstices.  I wanted to know without looking whether the moon is waxing, waning, new or full.  I wanted to connect to these things that I believed were a big part of what it meant to be pagan.  I blamed myself for this.  I was a bad pagan.  I wasn’t dedicated enough to this path that I had chosen.  I was stuck in my mundane world, with my boring job, my unpaid bills, and my never ending list of things I wanted to do but didn’t have time for.

Finally, I took a good hard look at my life and decided that some things were going to have to change.  I quit the boring job that wasn’t paying enough anyway and started writing full time.  I’m still behind, but it’s a start.  I started on that list of things I wanted to do.  I started working on being a better me and a better pagan.  I took out my old Book of Shadows and started looking for things to add to it.  I started studying again, with a pagan friend.  I marked my largest calendar with the holidays I didn’t want to miss.  I circled the moon phases with a highlighter.   I disciplined myself to check the calendar every morning and to be aware of the things I had written on it as I went about my day.

Yesterday I noticed that the moon was new but was so focused on deadlines that I didn’t give it much thought.  Then, this morning, I noticed a trend in my Facebook Newsfeed.  So many of my friends were breaking old habits, paring down their friends list, making peace with the past, and looking inward to see what they truly wanted from the world, their work, and their lives.  How perfectly in tune with the spirit of the new moon, yet these were not ‘good pagans’.  Many of them weren’t even pagan at all.  They were just people, doing what came naturally to them.

Surprised, I took a second look at the list of things I meant to do today.  Clear out email.  Catch up on my freelance jobs.  Finish the few nagging tasks I’ve been putting off. Clear off my cluttered bulletin board….  Wow.  Everything I had planned to do could be classified as cleansing and clearing.  I had planned my whole day around letting go of the things I no longer needed and making room for new the new things and new tasks that I felt were coming and while I knew that the moon was new and the month was ending, I didn’t consciously plan my day around the fact.  I was only doing what felt natural, just as my various Facebook friends were only doing what came naturally to them. Without even trying, we had set the pattern of our day to the rhythm of the world.

Months end and seasons change.  The moon will wax to full and then wane again.  And while I will still try to acknowledge these events and to mark their passing when I can, I won’t blame myself when I do not, because being a good pagan isn’t about remembering dates or checking calendars.  It is about learning, growing, celebrating, honoring the divine and attuning ourselves with the natural patterns and rhythms of the world even if that means just doing what comes naturally.