dénouement

Last night I so wanted to stay up and say one last goodbye to the waning thundermoon before she disappears for a few days and makes way for the birth of the two moons of completion, corn moon and harvest moon. Tonight she’s gone. Already, at her beckoning, I guess, the thunderstorms have abated. As the thunder moon wanes, so does the thunder. The first week of August brought clearer air, milder temps and a zillion stars in the late evening sky.
After the gym last night, Al and I stopped off at B&N for a cup of joe and ran into half a dozen people I haven’t seen in a long, long time. So we were late heading home. As we were driving, Allison mentioned how incredibly dark it seemed. “Is it cloudy, or is it just that there’s no moon?” I looked up at myriad stars and confirmed a clear sky.
I thought of how darkness and clarity are not mutually exclusive. The absence of light doesn’t mean that the source is gone. I know I make such a big deal of everything, but I also thought of God’s silence at big points in the writing of his salvation story. He seemed completely deaf and dead for the centuries before he spoke to Moses on the mountain and set in motion his plan to deliver the Hebrews and paint a metaphor for the more comprehensive story he was writing. He was deathly quiet in the centuries before Jesus stepped out of the Jordan river and headed into the wilderness to prepare for the climax of the comprehensive story. Seems like periods of silence are a major part of the writing of the story. But when the silence is broken and the word is spoken, we feel the joy of Simeon who had waited so long, but had stayed attentive and sure that the promise would be kept and word would come and break the silence.
I started snapping pics of the moon last June at Cranberry when I first got my camera. My lunar affair became evident to all, and some even joined me in admiring her. Though, I took pics of her nearly every night and contemplated many things in her company, I didn’t plug into what she had to tell me about cycles, time, surety, change, and myriad other contemplative topics until she shone bright as the autumnal harvest moon. There at the end of September, I sensed something to be learned at the hands of the fickle, but predictable nocturnal mistress. I remembered that God himself had set her and her entourage up there for signs and seasons and days and years. Certainly, she deserves a name for each of her cyclic manifestations, so I contemplated her name each month and thus was more attentive to what was going on around me and in me, and how I interacted with, and took part in my context. I believe this was the most aware, in-the-moment year of my life.
She truly is a mistress, for everything about her is feminine from her changing moods to her monthly privacy. I’ve often desired a telescope to study her more closely, but I know in my heart of hearts, I would know no more about her. It would be like studying biology to better understand my wife. Better to behold her and wonder in awe at her mystery as seen from where I’ve been given to see her.
In every season, at every stage, I learn to be in what there is to be in. I’m told what I need to know, and given what I need to have, and search for more. But in the searching and studying, I mustn’t forget to bask in ignorant wonder. She knows her place. I know mine.