Living in Relationship

Full Death Moon

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During one of the last really difficult times in my life I found myself on a bus in Providence, Rhode Island right around this time of year, in fact. It was a terrible, dumb night and I looked out the window to see a sign on top of a cab that read, "Sometimes you're the pigeon, and sometimes you're the statue." It felt apt then, and it still feels pretty apt.

Life is hard and sometimes we make it harder than it needs to be. Once again, I feel like I am being shown and asked to work through the same situation over and over again in various aspects of my life because it is just that important right now. The situation this time is all about relationships. How do we live in relationship with other? How do we form and nurture relationships when we come from very different kinds of lives? How do we nurture relationships as our lives change? How do we address issues we have with other people's actions and values within the context of relationships?

This is the darkest time of the year when days are short and cold. The Earth has breathed her soul back in, bringing back the experiences gained from a summer of living out in the cosmos to be worked into wisdom in this dark time. This inward motion pulls the creatures that live on her surface into various kinds of rest, repose and reflection. Some creatures are sleepy and dormant, others have actually died, living on only in their seeds or eggs that will burst forth in life as spring warms them. Humans, too, feel this pull to be indoors, introspective, dreamy or reflective. In some cultures winter is the time for story telling, retelling and recreating the narrative of the culture's beginnings and values each winter. In the Christian calendar this is the season of Advent, of waiting and preparing for the birth of the savior at the darkest dark point of the year. In my eclectic pagan theology, it is the time when we are also waiting, working on the wisdom we gathered during the last year's cycle and waiting for the new birth of the year at solstice.

As we consciously and unconsciously work through all the things we experienced over the last season of growth and harvest we discern patterns and come to conclusions about how our life is and how we want our life to be. The really tricky part comes when we have to make decisions about how to act on any of these conclusions.

At West Hills Friends the first light of advent was called the light of the prophets. Prophets are in direct relationship with god and speak up to their community about what they know. Their speaking up often puts them at odds with the people around them and can even sever relationships with people they used to be in strong relationship with. When Abram got word from Yaweh that he was to leave his home in Ur and travel to another land, it meant leaving behind everything and everyone he had known from childhood. John the Baptist was beheaded for his prophesying and Joseph Smith was run out of town (er, three of them), tarred and feathered and finally murdered for his prophetic visions. Being true to what you see, what you know and what you believe requires great courage and faith; courage to act despite the uncertainty and faith that you deserve to be heard, no matter the outcome.

The second light of advent this year at West Hills Friends was dedicated to the Angel Gabriel and those who receive his word with wonder. Our pastor told the story of Zachariah who, when told that his wife would become pregnant in her old age, asked how that would be and was promptly struck dumb. Many people consider this a punishment on Zachariah for questioning the Angel, but our pastor pointed out that Mary asked the same question and was not silenced. Zachariah's silence, our pastor argued, was a gift. He didn't have to explain himself, he didn't have to expound on his experience and he didn't have to defend his actions, belief or wonder. I see parallels between Zachariah's silence in the face of mystery with the silence of plants, the correspondence for the second week of advent in the Waldorf tradition. Plants and trees stand tall in the face of all the glory and mystery that is life on this planet.

Sometimes, as we wrestle with how to be in an authentic relationship with other people that is true to our own needs and beliefs, but also loves and honors the other person's innate humanity, we wrestle with these polar positions of speaking and being silent. How do we speak our truth with courage? When do we stay silent in the face of wonder that is god incarnate in another person's life? When do we speak up to protect our own integrity and how do we stay silent when we don't understand what is going on?

This month's full moon, the full moon in both the Death Moon and the Moon of Long Nights, is asking us all these questions and more. The full moon was fully eclipsed over much of the world on the night of December 10 and it feels like that eclipse brings even more questions and mysteries. As we spend these last two weeks sinking further into the darkness before the solstice, we might find ourselves wrestling with these questions. How do we live in relationship with other people? No one knows how to do it, but we all have to do it.

Moon photos by lamentables and jpstanley. Click on the photos or their names to see more of their amazing work. Thanks!

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** This winter was tough and I got messed up in my calendar. I wrote this thinking it was the Birth Moon but it was really the Death Moon. Since the post itself is more about the Moon of Long Nights, I just changed the tags and labels. For more on my thoughts about this, see this post. **


Full Death Moon 2008: Full Moon in Taurus

Full Death Moon 2009: Moving From the Season of the Dead

Full Death Moon 2010: Wear it As Long as Thou Canst

The Full Birth Moon post in 2010, The Dark of the Dark is also about a lunar eclipse.

The Dark of the Dark

Full Birth Moon

Full Birth Moon 2008: Outer Darkness and Inner Hope

Full Birth Moon 2009: New Year! and A Story for the Birth Moon

This post is also about Winter Solstice which I wrote about in the posts Good Morning Sun! and Solstice Creche in in 2008 and Christmas in 2009.

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December 21, 2010 was a dark night. Did you make it outside to view the full moon or the full lunar eclipse? Did you celebrate the longest night of the year, the winter solstice? We are lucky people to get to see all three of these heavenly events occur on the same night. The last time it happened was about 400 years ago.

Photo by Jezlyn26

I can't hardly imagine what it must have been like on that cold night in 1638. There were no electric lights anywhere. It was dark that winter, and most likely very cold. In northern Europe most people lived in homes that were very like the barns their cattle and sheep spent the winter in - low mud and straw buildings, perhaps with some timber supports, a thatch roof and a large stone fireplace or chimney in the middle of the building. People spent the long winter nights huddled around this one source of light and warmth, telling stories, spinning flax or wool, maybe whittling or working leather in the flickering fire light. One night, when it had been dark and cold for months, right before the great feast of Christmas, someone walking back from the barn or privy noticed that the full moon had a smudge on it. It looked like something was taking a bite out of the moon! As more people gathered to watch this horrifying, unnatural sight they were even more shocked when the disk of the moon, now fully darkened, turned a rusty blood red. It must have been a terrifying sight.

These people, with no scientific understanding of what was going on, used their own world view based on the stories of their Christian religion and the memories and remnants of their indigenous beliefs, to make sense of their world. Throughout most of history and across most

cultures a lunar eclipse was a very bad omen. It foretold death, famine, drought, flood or some other tragedy. Anything that upset the natural cycle of events can be very scary and the blessed light of the full moon transforming into a blood red disk seems pretty terrifying even to me, and I have a scientific understanding of the phenomena!We are a diurnal species and our culture is a light focused one. We revere the building, doing forces of the sun and take comfort in the brightness and light the full moon, a reflection of that sun. We, children of our biology and our culture, are very yang - dry, hot, light, piercing - and tend to not know what to do with things that are yin - wet, cool, dark, receiving. Sometimes we ignore these yin forces while often we actively suppress them with fear or hatred.

Many of our traditions and holidays for this darkest time of the year center around lighting up the dark. In Jewish tradition candles are lit on a menorah. In Pagan and Christian Europe lights are lit in the form of Christmas trees, candles in windows, yule logs and fairy lights. In modern times those lights have transformed into amazing spectacles of electric lights. We are performing an act of sympathetic magic - Oh, Powers of Light, if we light up the dark winter night will you bring the sun back and light up the world again? Please?! We modern people with a scientific mindset might laugh at this explanation of what we are doing, but for those people of the 17th century it was a clear requirement.

I am not against the probing, yang-ful pursuit of science or electric light spectaculars. Science allows us to know things about the physical world in a way that allows an emotional detachment and the lights cheer us in the dark nights. Yes, this scientific detachment can lead to a lack of wonder and awe but it also leads to a lack of fear about natural phenomenon. With our perspective from this side of fear we can build a better, more holistic view, of the world. Our atavistic, reptillian brain is terrified of the dark and we work hard to banish it. But that is not the only way.

In the book Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom Dr. Christina Northrup posits that our excessively yang, patriarchial society causes us to look at illness as a battle and every disease or symptom as an enemy. We "fight" cancer and "blast" tumors but in some ways the only victim of the war is our own selves. Dr. Northrup asks what if we looked at illness as a messenger? What might we need to learn that this disease or symptom is here to show us? The darknesses of night and winter have messages to bring us as well as the darknesses of illness and disease. In the story I posted last month, Night and Day, is a beautiful expression of this idea. In the story Day says to night "But I mistook your friendly shadow for that of death.... You, in whose silence and rest the very fountains of life are renewed"

What is the darkness of this time of year trying to tell you? How do you balance chasing the darkness away with cheer and lights with allowing yourself to sink fully into the darkness of the season? What do you need to lay down and let rest? What do you need renewed? How did you celebrate the darkest night of the year?