Advent Visions

December 20:  Moon

The moon was beautiful last night.  Nearly full, it shone through the bare branches of our great old maple tree, shining over our Christmas world.   Not bright "on the breast of the new-fallen snow," as in Clement Clark Moore's classic poem.   We will have no snow for Christmas this year.   But the moon will be close to full on Christmas Eve, and on the solstice tomorrow, too.     The old Farmer's Almanac says that there will not be a full moon on the winter solstice again until 2094, so I guess I won't be around to see it.      So I will take some time to wonder at the December "Cold Full Moon," as Native Americans call it.

Our human bodies and minds are intimately connected with the Moon.   We watch it wax and wane through the months of our lives, perhaps never noticing that the word "month" may be related to the word "moon."   Further, as it travels around the earth it tugs not only at our watery planet by affecting the ocean's tides, but it may tug at our mostly-liquid bodies as well.   The word "lunatic" refers to the belief that the full moon ("luna") causes erratic behavior in humans and animals.   Law enforcement officials report an increase in car accidents and criminal acts in the full moon.    Hospitals anecdotally prepare for more admissions and researches have found that during the full moon, restful REM sleep decreases.   And certainly the moon has a romantic tug on our imaginations.  Think of all the love songs about the moon!  And I love the scene in the great Christmas movie "It's a Wonderful Life," when the young George Bailey offers to lasso the moon for his beloved Mary.    Inspired, he  promises that "then you can swallow it, and it’ll all dissolve, see… and the moonbeams would shoot out of your fingers and toes and the ends of your hair…”

We are all creatures made of stardust and moonbeams.  At Christmas we remember that there are forces at work in us and in the world greater, and more mysterious, than we understand.   We make our way through our lives in the light of day, making a living and trying to make sense of our world.   But there is another power, like the moon, which tugs at our inner being.   Its light is not blinding, but soft, glowing in our deepest nights.    We feel it rising and falling, a thing just beyond our reach.   It comes as an ancient and holy tale, a child in the manger, God with us.   Even in our modern world, it draws us back over and over again, like love itself, shooting out of our fingers and the ends of our hair, illuminating our darkness.

Moon

You rise in us,
moon of our being,
silver in the shadowed night.
We whisper in this sacred presence,
as this tug in our bones
stirs some holy wonder.
We look up,
see sometimes just a thin crescent 
of reflected light,
almost devoured by darkness.
And then, we wait to watch
a miracle:
the shining, full,
a longing face looking down,
the love 
at the heart of the stars,
the light of Christmas.