GAZING AT THE MOON

My living room faces west. There are clerestory windows across the front. Many times at night, coming from the bathroom or bedroom, I catch sight of the moon in one of those high windows. I always stop to look but especially on nights when there's a full moon and moonlight comes streaming in. I stand still and gaze at the silver disk and think of all the people over thousands and thousands of years who have gazed up at the moon. Its radiance when it's full, the partial light as it waxes and wanes. I feel myself part of that great chain of being, of all the generations that have come before me beginning with the first homo sapiens on the savannas of Africa. All of us gazing up at the compelling mystery in the sky. It doesn't matter than men have landed on the moon; it is still compelling and mysterious and fills me with awe. So much on earth can fill me with awe - the beauty of the natural world, but gazing at the moon has a difference. It is off the earth, far away, and points me out into the universe, to a sense of infinite space which I will never fathom but which comforts me and makes me feel rightsized. The moon's light, its mystery, reach the deepest part of me and all I have to do is stop for a moment and gaze up.