Burden or Blessing?

"I have issues with anyone who treats faith as a burden instead of a blessing." - Serendipity, Dogma

There's those fluffy bunnies everyone bitches about - all white light and rainbows, all comfy goddesses like soft old grandmas who always give you a cookie, nice, unthreatening gods who resemble Santa and a favorite uncle all in one tidy package.

Then there's the SRS CRAFT types.

(I know. I've reverted to lolcat speak. But they bring out my inner snot-nosed adolescent who knows when the adults in her life are bullshitting her.)

I've been sick with the Sinus Crud for the better part of a week, which has led to a lot of surfing. I've found a lot of cool sites by pagans/Wiccans/witches - especially Lover of strife and his pals; where are all these cool, gay, 30-something guys in Texas, exactly? I'd like to hang out with them for an afternoon at least. Others...eh.

These others started out OK; there was some actual serious stuff for the long-past-101-phase practitioner. Then things got VRY SRS. Posts about how their Gods demand so much, things you could never deal with, but they have to, because this isn't all sweetness and light, it is DARK and SCARY and they're SRS and you're not.

Maybe it's the cold medicine talking, but I thought martyrdom was for Those Other People With The Guy On A Stick (no, not the Asatruar! That's the Guy In A Tree).

I've been given a hard time by my matrons/patrons. I've felt some scary energies. Hell, I've felt some downright malicious ones. I've had to deal with people deciding they were possessed by the demon Sarek (Spock's dad on the Star Trek series, the revelation of which to said possessee apparently deflated the possession somewhat; I luckily dealt with that little disaster from a distance). I've had woods trying to scare me out of them, I've been told to use my own blood in spells (yes, that kind; hey, it's traditional), a past-life meditation told me I was a human sacrifice rather than some Druid Priestess Princess, and I've been known to jump up and down and point at the sky while shouting, "WHAT DO YOU WANT, DAMMNIT?!"

However.

I haven't found this terribly scary or overwhelmingly difficult to deal with. Sometimes, in my duties as a priestess, I have to deal with people who I'd rather avoid like the proverbial plague. Sometimes, having an angry land spirit in your basement sucks. Sometimes, giving all this up and becoming Episcopalian crosses my mind. But I tend to think of all of this as being like any other job: the commute sucks and there's that one guy in Accounting we're all ready to beat to death with the copier, but the break room is nice, my bosses are fair and generally stay off my ass as long as I do my best.

Treating the service of your gods/your witchcraft/whatever as this scary, dark thing that mere mortals cannot handle is like complaining about everything at your job; after a while, I start to wonder why you aren't looking for a new boss. I start to think that you want everyone to realize how important you are, how difficult your job is, because you're really not getting enough out of it to satisfy you.

The fluffbunnies irk me. I want to strangle the people who chirp, "Harm none!" like demented occult Mynahs. I keep waiting for the Morrighan to smite this one dude who insists she's really very nice and just misunderstood. But acting like dealing with the darker side of all this is the only way to be a serious witch is as silly as saying a Catholic priest's gig should be like The Exorcist every day.