Good morning…
“Sue, the full moon is setting over the water this AM in Cape San Blas,” texted my friend yesterday morning. “Not a bad spot to spend the week of work!”
Her gorgeous photo made me excited all day, looking forward to seeing the nearly full moon from our back porch tonight. Curious, I stepped out to greet the big ball of light, and instead I experienced this.
No moon. Tons of clouds. Bits of blue sky. I expected one kind of beauty, and I received another. It reminded me of what we learned a few semesters back as we studied Learning to Walk in the Dark by Barbara Brown Taylor.
“I have been given the gift of lunar spirituality,” writes Barbara, “in which the divine light available to me waxes and wanes with the season. When I go out on my porch at night, the moon never looks the same way twice. Some nights it is as round and bright as a headlight; other nights it is thinner than the sickle hanging in my garage. Some nights it’s high in the sky, and other nights low over the mountains. Some nights it is altogether gone, leaving a vast web of stars that are brighter in its absence. All in all, the moon is a truer mirror for my soul than the sun that looks the same way every day.”
“After I stopped thinking that all these fluctuations meant something was wrong with me, a great curiosity opened up: what would my life with God look like if I trusted this rhythm instead of opposing it?” Barbara wonders on page nine.
The moon is constantly fluctuating.
Bigger – smaller.
Higher – lower.
Thinner – thicker.
Brilliant – absent.
Clouded – clear.
“The moon is a truer mirror
of my soul
than the sun
that looks the same every day.”
My soul doesn’t look or feel or respond to life the same way each day. I’m very familiar with my inner fluctuations. Sometimes I wonder, “God, what’s wrong with me?”
Silently, now I step back outside, searching for some muddled answer.
“Gray is okay,” I seem to sense God say. “Feeling stuck leads to being still, as you trust My lunar rhythm.”
God says, “Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10a, NCV).
What do you see in the mirror of the moon?
…Sue…
P.S. After reading this post, my friend texted me from the beach. “I’m seeing it for you!”
Sometimes we need others to see for us.
