I graduated college in the summer of 1996. Years of academic effort had left me burned out and spiritually bereft, though I attended a religious college and considered myself a devout xtian. My friends and I had been visiting various churches, trying to find one that felt right, and I was growing more and more disatisfied with my religious life.

Then one night a few weeks after graduation, my friends and I went for a walk in the campus nature preserve after dark. It had been suffocatingly hot and humid all day, but the air was cooling. Walking through the dark felt like dipping into a cool swimming pool after a long, hot day.

In the woods the air was full of the stirring of leaves and the eerie music of frogs. The moonlight turned all colors into shades of silver and black, and glinted on the ponds and streams that meandered through the trees.

And wandering through that beautiful night, I felt a wholeness, and an aliveness, I hadn’t experienced since I was a child wandering the forests around my  home. I’d been seeking communion with the sacred in churches and religious education, but not finding it, for years. And under that brilliant moon, surrounded  by whispering trees and singing frogs, I found myself finally immersed in the mystery I’d been longing for.

Though it would be several more years before I became rooted in a new religious path, that night was a turning point for me. And that night, I understood if you can’t find something you’ve been seeking by the light of day, you might need to look instead by the light of the moon.

Questions to ponder:

Have you noticed feeling different, physically or emotionally, when you gaze at the moon or stand in her light?

Have you noticed the phase of the moon having any effect on your sleep?

What is your favorite phase of the moon?

Can you remember a time (or several) when you experiened something on a moonlit night that felt truly magical?

Photo by Johnny Kaufman courtesy of Unsplash.

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