There were two full moons in October this year, so the 13th full moon happened in December. I guess I don’t usually pay much attention to how many full moons we have, but when you do it is really magical. How much attention does it take to see the whole world through a lens that reminds us of the magic or sacredness of each thing, each creation, each tree, person, stone or celestial body. Late on the last week of December, I was walking home in the stillness of the night, the moon was almost full and an amazing rainbow, circle, halo glowed around the moon. I stopped in wonder, you don’t see this every day. Gavin Pretor-Pinney said in his book A Cloud a Day: “Less common and even more magical are the optical phenomena caused by the moon. Its light can produce all the same effects as the Sun’s, but lunar bows and halos phenomena are observed far less frequently because they are usually too faint for our eyes to pick out. Except, of course, when the Moon is full. At its brightest, when the sky is wreathed in an ice-crystal layer of Cirrostratus, the Moon can trace a broad ring of light as a 22 -degree lunar halo, as its silvery glow refracts through the clouds’s tumbling prisms of ice.” Isn’t that a great description!
We had another great celestial opportunity last month when Jupiter and Saturn aligned. It was cloudy here but we were doing yoga on zoom and Ash was in Utah, she tried to show us the alignment, but zoom doesn’t have telescopic resolution. Well I guess we’ll just have to wait another 80 years, in the mean time we can make an intention to notice and observe the world around us. In January, Weaving Home’s theme is stillness or silence. The snow falls without sound, unless the wind is howling, the evergreen branches are coated with ice crystals, glitter in diamond stillness again the winter sky. Stillness gives us an opportunity to observe what is around us and what is within us. Can we notice the ‘tumbling prisms of ice’ that hang from our eaves this time of year, or the crystals on the spruce needles? When we are present with this natural phenomena we are present to the sacred.
John Philip Newell’s new book will be called Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul. In it he explains that for the ancient Celts there was no difference between what was sacred and their everyday life. They believed that in every moment there was a chance to glimpse the wonder and awe all around us. They taught that ‘the birth of a child, any child, not just the Christ child, was not a new light that was coming into the world but a manifestation of the light that was in the earth, a manifestation of the light that was in the sea, a manifestation of the light that was in the sky. The light of the earth, sea and sky danced with the light that was in the child. Every creature, every child and every life form, … a fresh coming of the divine among us.’ Imagine if we are still what will be birthed in us, imagine how a world view of this kind can heal our brokenness and remind us that we are all one.