On a frosty morning, with snow on the branches, I walked across the road to a tree, with snow on the branches, and a full moon waning but still brightly visible. I took this photo, deliberately lining up tree, twig and moon, to create a soft light globe, hanging over a still sleeping world.
The moon as our night light, a sign of the comforting presence of another who keeps the darkness at bay; or at least so we believed in childhood. The moon as the lesser light which compensates for those times in the rhythm of days and seasons when the sun is hidden and we are otherwise in darkness. The moon as reminder that, as Isaiah said, in the coming day of redemption "the light of the moon will be like the light of the sun." (Is 30.26)
None of which occurred to me at around 6.am in the freezing cold - I simply wanted a photo. But now the image is linked in my mind with a hopefulness and joy at the sheer serendipity, the accidentalness (is that a word - if not can I patent it?), the glimpsed surprise of that small circle of light against a lightening sky.
Mary Oliver has some lovely lines about embracing the gift that each new day brings.
“And that is just the point... how the world, moist and beautiful,
calls to each of us to make a new and serious response.
That's the big question,
the one the world throws at you every morning. "
Here you are, alive. Would you like to make a comment?”
Mary Oliver.
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