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Birth Moon

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I've always had favorite landmarks and trees and animals and views on my drives. I always note them and greet them when I drive past. I mark the changing seasons based on how they change and enjoy coming back and seeing them when my path takes me back that way after an absence. There is a potted tree on a balcony near the Marquam Bridge that I watched change with the seasons for three years. I still wave to the sign for Hugo, OR that was a landmark on my drive up from college in Ashland.


On my long drive to The Quiet Little Mountain Town I have a few... the field with the cows up near Colton, the guard llama in the field with the reservoir near Molalla and this tree. It is a huge, stately oak tree on the corner of Hwy 99E and Hwy 211 on the outskirts of Woodburn. It is so huge that it must have been there long before the Little Ceasar's pizza it now stands in the parking lot of, or the Arco and Safeway across the busy intersection. It must have stood there when this was a sleepy corner in the middle of berry, lettuce or alfalfa fields. It might even have been there when this was still a soggy oak meadow frequented by mule deer, coyotes and Kalapuya people.

But now it is a friend of mine. A big, stately tree, silhouetted against the winter sky marking my abrut turn from south to east or west to north, heralding the beginning of the scenic, post-sunrise portion of my drive of the dark, straight shot to home. Thank you, tree. Thank you for surviving. Thank you for sporting those dashing yellow leaves and now the splendid black branches against the grey sky. Thank you for surviving, and still being here to show me the way. I hope you are here for another century or more, doing your tree thing.

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** This winter was tough and I got messed up in my calendar. The moon that this post was written about -the Birth Moon - and the moon that it actually was according to Annette Hinshaw's calendar - the Death Moon - are not the same. For more on my thoughts about this, see this post. **

This is an extra, bonus post for the Birth Moon this year. There will be a full, solid, Full Birth Moon post next week sometime. Check out my other posts labeled Birth Moon.

It's Hard

New Birth Moon

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I'm student teaching right now and it is possibly the hardest thing I've ever done.

What's so hard is the commute. A solid hour each way with the sun rising halfway through the morning drive and setting halfway through the evening drive - if I leave right on time, which I rarely do. It's a long, stressful drive and it leaves me exhausted every day.

What's so hard is how tired I am. To get there before class starts means waking up at 5am. I rarely make it back home before 7pm and then it's essentially make-dinner-pack-lunch-pass-out time.

What's so hard is how lonely I am. I don't see my friends, or really have much contact with them. My days are filled with strangers and people I'm not terribly fond of. And those long, long drives.

What's so hard is how stressed out I am. I have so much schoolwork, both for the student teaching itself and for my other classes. I'm behind in everything, and this knot in my stomach hasn't really left in a couple weeks.

It's all hard, and sometimes I drown in the hardness. Sometimes I can't see out of my own Debbie-Downer attitude about being tired and lonely and stressed out. Sometimes I cry. OK, more than sometimes.

The new moon we are celebrating this weekend is the Birth Moon in Annette Hinshaw's calendar and the Moon of Long Nights in the calendar Jessica Prentice lays out. The Moon of Long Nights is the month of the Winter Solstice, the month of darkness.

In her book, Full Moon Feast, Jessica Prentice discusses a number of authors and researchers who have looked at how the human body responds to light and darkness, disease and health, known and unknown. She says something I've stated before on this blog - that our culture is a culture of light and growth and bigger, better, onward and upward but our physiology needs rest periods. Too often we deny the darkness and fallow periods in life to the detriment of our psychological, spiritual and physical health.

What is interesting to me is not so much the darkness of winter, but other kinds of darkness. I have spent a number of years allowing myself to sink into that rhythm of the seasons and have come to quite enjoy the rest that comes with the long nights and wet days of winter. What I am experiencing right now, though, is a different kind of darkness, a dark time of a trial or that dark night of the soul some people experience when they feel so far away from god. It's just so hard.

Some days, I drown in the darkness. I am lonely and sad and tired and freaked out. I am being pushed and stretched and molded and it hurts. I think about staying in bed or of driving to Texas instead of to my Quiet Little Mountain Town. Some days I am sure my friends don't care about me and I'll never be able to do what is asked of me and it will all end in disaster. It is dark, and hard.

Other days, or other hours, I can bob up out of the darkness and feel the pull of the Birth Moon even in the midst of the darkness. The Birth Moon is the time when new light and new hope is born, even in the middle of the hard. I can see clearly, my head is on straight and I know this is all for the good. The hard is the call, it is the point of it all. If I didn't do anything hard I'd never get any better and this particular hard only lasts a couple more weeks. I am actually coping well and learning so much. And the sunrises, and the beautiful mountain valleys, and the leaves and the kids are all amazing.

On these days I feel so clearly and strongly my pronoic foundational beliefs. The Universe really IS a conspiracy to make me smarter, wiser, happier and better. The difficult is doing the exact same thing as the delightful; making my life more fully useful to god's purposes. I am being tested and trained in the crucible, but it is all for the best. Hard is the calling, hard is the name of the game. But it's still really, really hard.

My family's Thanksgiving tradition is to go around the table during dinner and say what we are thankful for. This week I had four different Thanksgiving dinners with four different "families" and four different delicious spreads of food. And at each dinner I said what I was thankful for; I am thankful for my friends and family who do love me, even if my monsters sometimes try to convince me otherwise. I am thankful that no matter how poor or disadvantaged I may feel, I can still buy gas, socks and chocolate ice cream. I am thankful for the hard. It really is working to liberate me from suffering, shower me with blessings and make me smarter, stronger and happier.


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For the wide sky and the blessed sun,
For the salt sea and the running water,
For the everlasting hills
And the never-resting winds,
For trees and the common grass underfoot.
We thank you for our senses
By which we hear the songs of birds,
And see the splendor of the summer fields,
And taste of the autumn fruits,
And rejoice in the feel of the snow,
And smell the breath of the spring.
Grant us a heart wide open to all this beauty;
And save our souls from being so blind
That we pass unseeing
When even the common thornbush
Is aflame with your glory,
O God our creator,
Who lives and reigns for ever and ever.

A Thanksgiving prayer by Walter Rauschenbush.

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** This winter was tough and I got messed up in my calendar. The moon that this post was written about -the Birth Moon - and the moon that it actually was according to Annette Hinshaw's calendar - the Death Moon - are not the same. For more on my thoughts about this, see this post. ** 


New Birth Moon 2008: Waiting

New Birth Moon 2009: Advent, Awaiting the Birth

New Birth Moon 2010: Winter is Dark, Yet Each Tiny Spark


I also talked about Very Hard Things in the post Very Bad Things and Our Lady of Sorrows.

C.S. Lewis on Praise

New Harvest Moon

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Before the loaf, the snowy white flour
Before the flour the mill.
Before the mill the wheat and the shower,
The sun and Our Father's will.

I have been reading a collection of C.S. Lewis essays called Reflections on the Psalms. I've read a few other pieces of Lewis' non-fiction work, letters and essays, and greatly enjoy them all. He and I may differ quite significantly in some aspects but I do love reading him. I would love to have him as a neighbor or great uncle to visit with, drink tea and listen to him ramble on about God and life and such.

In his rambling on about the Psalms he comes to the issue of praise of God. He says that he never used to understand the commandment to praise God or the way some people seems to be bargaining with God through praise. He finally came to a realization that praising god is the scaled up version of the praising we do of all good things in our lives. "It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not to be able to tell anyone how good he is; to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in the ditch. " We express our delight and enjoyment because that expression makes the enjoyment full. We delight and enjoy God and so can't help but exclaim that joy in words, songs and actions of praise.

Lewis makes the point that this praise is not only natural, but it is evidence of health. "The healthy and unaffected man, even if luxuriously brought up and widely experienced in good cookery, could praise a very modest meal: the dyspeptic and the snob found fault with all." A healthy attitude towards life leads to praising earthly experiences so a healthy attitude towards the divine would equally lead to robust and genuine praise of God. The question I have, though, in light of this current Harvest Moon, is which is the seed and which is the harvest? The healthy attitude or the genuine praise?

For our daily bread we thank the Father
We thank the sun and the moon and the stars
We thank the wind and the frost and the rain
We thank the earth, we thank the grain
The thank the beasts and all farming men.

I have been thinking a lot about gratitude, complaining, cynicism and acceptance lately. I've been more and more annoyed by negativity I see in people around I have been making an effort to not take part in that talk or thinking myself. I made a New Water Year resolution to not complain about the weather, a resolution I joke will lead me to an abnormally high level of complaining about my clothes. But then I think, clothes are something I can change so it's OK to critique them, the weather is not. Many great thinkers from Gautama Buddha to Viktor Frankl to Thomas Jefferson have said that attitude is the key to a fulfilled life. There is a space between what happens to us and how we react and in that space we make a decision about how we will react and what we will believe about the action. This is a space for optimism, for gratitude and for god.

I still wonder, though, which is the seed and which is the harvest? Do we have a steady bearing in the world because we make space for gratitude and praise in between events and reactions, or does a good attitude cause the space to open up? Maybe, like so many other complex systems, it is a matter of both elements playing a part. We nudge the system from whatever part of it we happen to be standing at in the moment - giving thanks when we want to complain, or inserting praise into the space we feel at the moment in between.

The seed and root beneath the earth,
The willful growing shoot,
The hopeful bud and flow'ring blossom
Turned to glowing fruit.
We thank the earth who grew this food from little bursting seeds,
And the keepers of the earth whose gifts fulfill our needs.

What harvests are you celebrating this month? Are you seeing a harvest in attitude, thanksgiving or relationship with god or is that a future harvest you are sowing for now? How is your garden winding up? Have you found any fruit trees in the neighborhood or great deals at the green grocer? How do you give thanks when you really just want to complain?

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New Harvest Moon 2009: The Harvest Moon is New

Apparently I didn't post a New Harvest Moon post in 2010, but I did post Harvest Moon during that month.

Giving Thanks at the Equinox

This last weekend was the spring equinox. My original plan was to wake up for the sunrise on Saturday and go up to Council Crest. The weather on Friday was beautiful and Saturday was supposed to be just as gorgeous. Before I went to bed on Friday, though, I decided to put off the sunrise trip to Sunday so I could sleep in on Saturday. Knowing your limits and your needs is important after all. The clouds and rain moved in on Saturday night and Sunday morning broke grey and drizzly. I went to the field close to my house, where I went for the Autumn Equinox, and didn't even see the mountain. Or the sun. Just a solid, steel grey, soggy wet sky.

That didn't really dampen my spirits, though. As I walked through the damp field, smelling new growth and cherry blossoms, listening to birds singing and watching my dog run through the mist I couldn't help but feel full of joy and thanks. It's the new dawn of a new season in a beautiful place. I have a warm bed to sleep in, dry boots to walk in and food on the table every day. How can I be anything but thankful?

Shortly after I started attending my neighborhood Quaker Meeting I began a practice of prayer. I remember feeling quite lost during the open worship time of my first few meetings. What do I do now? Just sit here? I fell back on the little bit of experience I had at zen type meditation but didn't have much luck with stilling my mind. Right at the beginning of Lent, I am a little bashful to admit, I actually googled "how do I pray" and read most of the first hundred hits. (For a glimpse into the American mind type "how" into the google search bar and see what the autofill shows up... we are weird, weird people). And thus began my adventure with praying.

I remember hearing an interview on NPR a while back about a woman going through a 12 step program and finding a meaningful spiritual practice. She said that when she started praying it felt like someone had told her to start talking to a log. She couldn't imagine getting anything out of the experience, but she tried anyway. I wasn't starting quite at that point, but beginning a practice of praying was still a leap of faith. Why should I talk to god like that? She knows I'm here, knows what I want, knows what I need. Who am I to ask for intercession, or for my wishes to be granted? God has a plan, and it will be as it will be.
Photo by kukkurovaca

In the past I had tried working with pagan style rituals complete with incantations, candles, calling the directions and other props. Sometimes it worked, sometimes I felt a connection with the divine, but just as often it felt like simply going through the process. Daily praying has been an amazing experience I think mostly because it is daily. It gets easier, less stilted. I started with a formula that worked like that pagan ritual, but simpler. First I used a three step, "hello, thank you, please" type prayer and then the Lord's prayer modified to my needs. At first the formula really helped by giving me a script to follow. Over time I have found that I sink into a place where the script is no longer needed and sometimes words are no longer even needed. That is when I am really able to hear what the Quakers call the small still voice. I have even felt what pagans refer to as building, sending and grounding the spirit. I have felt enveloped by love, I have had epiphanies and I have found answers. Other times I still need the formula to get started and some nights I just repeat the Lords prayer a couple times and figure I'll give it another try tomorrow.

The morning of the Equinox, after my short walk, I stood at the top of the hill facing what would have been the sunrise had the clouds let the sun actually rise and began my new prayer ritual or process. But that morning I didn't feel like asking forgiveness for my trespasses or asking to not be led into temptation. I just wanted to say thanks.

Thank you, Sweet Goddess, for the cherry blossoms and magnolias. Thank you for the robins and starlings and crows that sing me awake these days. Thank you for the sheep sorrel and young lupines in the field, for the little three leaved plants that will soon make pretty pink clovers. Thank you for the rain that keeps the grass green well into August. Thank you for my car that starts each morning and gets me home safe each night. Thank you for the eggs and toast and hot tea I will drink when I get home, and for the massive abundance of food available to me any time I want it. Thank you for my mind that searches and finds, my heart that feels and knows and my body that can do almost everything I ask of it and so much more I don't need to ask it to do. Thank you for the morning. Thank you for the spring.