Our First New Moon
Our little Bright Orthodoxy circle held our first in-person gathering under the new moon last night. Serendipitously, this new moon marked the lunar new year. (Auspicious!)
We met at sunset and exchanged greetings and settled in under a pavilion. One of the church elders found the perfect location for us. It was unreal. We lit candles, offered each other token gifts, and shared a simple meal. It was all highly improvisational, as profound as it was relaxed. We ate by the light of the setting sun and then by candlelight. The dog found a soggy tennis ball and kept dropping it at our feet to throw for him. It felt right.
As we finished, I shared a reading (which I share with you below) and then we sent our hopes for the coming year skyward with a small offering. To close the event we did some stargazing. The view was fantastic. We found Orion and the Pleiades. It felt prehistoric. We were a small group, but our hearts were full.
And so— Thank you to everyone who joined, and extra love to those who couldn't make it but were with us in spirit. I can’t wait to see you at the next one and fortunately there are 12-13 opportunities a year. Here’s hoping the new moon brings gentle transformation to us all.
Reflection
We know from the Book of Numbers that the Israelites gathered on the new moon. The God of the Old Testament ordered them to make burnt offerings and blow trumpets. And so they did, with feasting and fellowship, and in some ways they haven’t stopped. Jesus was born and died but in between he probably feasted too. Hundreds of years after him, early Christians still gathered on these moonless nights for candlelight vigils around their martyrs' graves. Elsewhere in the dark their adversaries the Mithraists administered their mysteries.
Despite their differences, both looked into the void as we are doing now and in its cutting stars they saw ten thousand eyes of God. They stared up at God, and he stared back at them. Or they believed so, and there are no eyes because there is no God. It doesn’t matter here. The vast silence overhead inspires awe tinged with terror nonetheless. A starry night sky stirs a sense of smallness in us all.
Galaxies operate on a scale that we were not designed to understand. We see the stars as they were thousands of years ago, so great is their distance from us. We cannot see the edges of the universe but what we can suggests its indifference to the life that evolved within it. Astronomers measure the time between planetary alignments in terms of lifetimes. To the heavenly bodies overhead, our lives and deaths are soft as breaths. An inhale and an exhale. No cultic practice has changed this, no one has been excused.
We are small and fleeting, we are stardust and ashes. And to ashes, soon enough, we will return.
Until then we look back at the void and its stars with its eyes. We make sense out of chaos where there is none. We make meaning, we assert it to shout into the void that we are not the void. That we have shape and will and substance. We blow trumpets, send smoke to the heavens and bang on pots and pans. We gather and feast under these eyes. We are unruly because we will not be ruled by emptiness. We are small but we are not alone.
