Moon over Washington, DC

At its zenith, last night's gorgeous moon, expanding in radiance in its steady ascension, reflected back to us Earth's own rising spirit.

There is beauty everywhere.  Life is still an amazing, luminescent and mysterious - and terrible - adventure. We are amazed all the time.  Last night's full lunar eclipse, at first glowing like an enormous lantern, was at the very least a reminder of the awesome, genius of creation itself.  A rock in the sky, shining back to Earth her own tempestuous evolving state of affairs - tranquil, idyllic, aesthetic - even poetic - in some areas and dissentious, rebellious, dark and messy in others.

"All of creation travails as a mother in childbirth," St. Paul wrote in Romans 8:22 (my paraphrasing)

A priest friend of mine once said to a parishioner who was lamenting a difficulty he was facing, "In order for an airplane to ascend and fly, it needs resistance from the air flow beneath it."

As we are all challenged in own own uniquely personal prescription for soul-growth, we will also all spiral through profoundly dark times, painful challenges, so difficult that we may come to doubt even the wisdom, genius and love of our Creator and the creation process itself.  In order for an experience to be truly disconnected from any of our support resources, it has to stand alone in its sense of reality, and that's a terribly dark place.  In short, you have to come to the end of your rope, and then step off into the abyss.

Although Søren Kierkegaard said that it is only then, in the air, off the cliff, that we find or experience faith, I might add that even then, we will remain in the dark for as long as it takes for our soul to evolve during that gestational period. That time period may be moments or years. It takes as long as it takes. It is a birthing process but we are not our own mother or midwife.  We are not in control of it, despite how much we thrash and cry out. We are at the mercy of something else, someone else, so awesome, so authentic, that it's simply ineffable. 

When we are completely out of resources, when there is no hope - none, period - only then will our soul, stirring breathlessly deep in our subconscious turn its face to God.  Then, miraculously - no other word comes close - God does act. It is always what is right, what is needed, but it seems to only come when we're ready.  I don't understand any more than that.  

Then, the music resonates, the wine flows, the children play, the flowers bloom, the sun shines and all is well again. The sun comes out after the rain, and as we take it all in, it even seems the dark death we'd gone through makes all the joyous sounds of the light so much sweeter.

And, so it is.  Life is often a mirror of all that - the dark, the light, the tempestuous and the tranquil.  It is awesome and in some inexplicable way, one which we never dreamt we would admit to while in the dark, it is all good, truly wonderful.

Last night's amber hue, cast across a brilliantly white luminescent moon, reminded us of Earth's own on-going processes, passionately real, terribly awesome.  And, it is like a childbirth, painful and yet each spiral of dark, that rings around to light, brings forth a new part of our collective soul.  Humanity is giving birth to herself, evolving, growing and reaching together as we grow up, becoming  a little bit more authentic, transparent and passionately alive each time.

(Above photo of ruby-red lunar eclipse courtesy of Jared Pias of Washington, D.C.)