Eclipse

Matthew, Natalie and I stayed up until 3:30am to watch the lunar eclipse  the other night.  Matthew's flight was so late getting in from Chicago that it was after 1:00am when we got back from the airport.  By that point staying up another hour or so was easy. 

December 21st was the first time since 1638 that the winter solstice, the longest night of the year, and a lunar eclipse happened on the same night.  It seemed like an occaision worth waiting up for.  Plus, the moon was full and bright over our house.   (I've posted before how much the moon means to me.  See the August 26th post, "Wonder" here.)

It was icy cold out.  The moon looked just like the pictures I had seen earlier in the day of a lunar eclipse on Yahoo.  My camera barely gives a hint of it how cool it was in real life.

 The moon gradually got darker and darker and then became a rusty deep orange.  It didn't look like the moon at all.  It was like it had turned into Mars.  I wondered about what mankind's relationship with the moon would have been like if the moon were always that dark.  It wasn't the warm golden glow of a harvest moon.  It was a dark menacing presence. 

When the moon became dark, the stars all around it in the sky became brighter.  Brilliant compared to the way they had appeared a short time before.

When I was watching the eclipse a line kept running through my head, "In a dark time, the eye begins to see."  I didn't know where I had heard it or what it was from.  It just seemed hopeful and true.   It turned out to be the title of a poem by Theodore Roethe. 

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,

I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;

I hear my echo in the echoing wood-

a lord of nature weeping to a tree,

I live between the heron and the wren,

Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

 

What's madness but nobility of soul

at odds with circumstance?  The day's on fire!

I know the purity of pure despair,

My shadow pinned against a sweating wall,

That place among the rocks - is it a cave,

Or winding path?  The edge is what I have...

 

I have learned this past year what it is like to walk on the edge, facing possible death from my cancer and also experiencing incredible love and support from family and friends.  Being sad one minute and then rushing to take more flower pictures.  Working to try to make a cave a winding path.

We didn't stay up to see the moon turn white again, but when I woke up a few hours later around 7am, it was bright outside my window.

Those who know me well know that Christmas is not my favorite holiday.  Working many years in retail with long hours and impatient customers has dimmed the holiday spirit for me a bit.  Not to mention hearing countless sorry renditions of carols on the Musak system.

Even so, Matthew, Natalie and I had a good time decorating the tree the next day.  The old pagan custom of bringing greenery inside at the darkest time of year hit me this year more than most.  Greenery served as a symbol of eternal life and a reminder that the green of new life or spring would come again.  Or as wikipedia puts it, "Perhaps they wished to honor and imitate the triumph of these living greens over the cold and darkness of winter." 

I saw the green this year in a way usually only reserved for my favorite holiday - New Years.  For me New Years has always been a holiday of hope and celebration of a new start.  I love New Year's parties and have often made elaborate collage/art books of what I want to work on or experience in a coming year.   This year has been a hard one for me.  I'm ready for a new one.

But New Years isn't here yet.  It's Christmastime.  And that means stars.  Brighter than ever on a dark night and on top on an evergreen tree.

This is the star elf on our tree:

Happy Holidays!  Whether it be Chanuka, the festival of lights, or Christmas, and the light of a star over Bethlehem, that you celebrate - may there always be light after darkness for you.

 

Comments

[Annie B.]

And you shall carry that light with you as you await more test results. This phrase is one of my favorite magnet quotes (you've probably seen it everywhere, but now it seems more special): "Friends are like stars. You may not be able to see them, but they are always there." We are always here...

[Connie Cross]

Remember that you are one of the brightest stars in my sky!

[Virginia]

And I know your role - to place the star at the top... Ta da!
The dark moon and glimmer of stars does show so much to us.
Thinking of you, Peace, and Blessed be.

[Lisa D]

Thanks, Ann and Connie and VA! I have the same star magnet on my fridge, too! You all are definitely among my friends that I think of as always there! xoxo and thanks, VA, for remembering my favorite childhood book about the star on the top of the Christmas tree. I was going to say something about it in the post, but then I thought it would be too long.