What do Valentine's Day and a full moon have to do with one another?
Not much at first glance. Sure, many abundantly amorous lovers will be basking in
the moonlight tonight while looking into one another eyes, or
whispering sweet-nothings into one another ears, but it
simply means that that white pearl in the sky will be more the backdrop
for their own stage rather than an element of the stage in which their love takes
place.
Tonight as I gazed at the moon on this Valentine's Night, my mind
dwelled little on the candy hearts, flowery smells, or the syrupy love of
highschool sweethearts - yet I felt that a different kind of love
was not far away. This love hides itself well and there is a sense that
it is something like the deepest love, yet always readily
imperceptible, as if it were an ocean trench but viewed from the
very top, so that one has practically no grasp of its depth or secrets but
intuitively knows that they are both there in plenty. This love is in
marked contrast to the "love" that is the little shell lying
at the top of the trench safe, content, but fooling itself in its own sense of
depth. Instead of looking down it looks up through the mere 20 feet of
water and says "look how deep I've gone!" failing to notice the
trench at its side - perhaps more from fear than from ignorance.
But if this post were to examine the shortcomings of the societal notions of
"love" I would unfortunately not have the time or space to contain it
all here. Yet I feel myself still very much enthused with the idea of a
Valentine's Day and all that comes with it - even with some of its flowery
fakeness. Valentine's Day may be overdone but that is because it rightly
deserves to be enthusiastic, a celebration of butterflies-in-stomach's and
puppy love's - at its heart a love affair with the feelings of love itself.
However, when we go past the feelings I think we find that there is a
Feeling beneath all feelings - a feeling yet not a feeling. Perhaps a
completed feeling content in and of itself without the longing that typical
feelings contain. It is in this Feeling that we can dwell and rest.
There are many that are not a stranger to this Feeling and if we were to
discuss this Feeling of feelings and all it contains we could again go on
forever - so tonight I would rather muse on that Feeling in a particular way
that struck me on this Valentine's Night - the beauty of the moon.
As I gazed at the full moon, its brightness a reflection of it's cosmic
companion the sun's own light I felt like I was looking down my own
ocean trench. In a way it is difficult - I wanted to jump and see the
rest but I had no time or way of doing so. And yet it is also completely
satisfying even if in just a very small way.
Really what I was thinking as I gazed at that beauty of the night sky, her
halo aura shed around her and lighting the stratus clouds as they
quickly skitted in and out of her gaze, was where we find God.
Except my mind was not on Him, persay, but on Her.
As a Christian I have learnt that God is both male and female. But whereas
the masculinity of God's story continued, indeed dominated all I learned, I
couldn't help but ask where God's femininity went to. I am happy to
say as a Catholic that it went in many ways to the Blessed Mother, but I still had to ask
"where is She - God as a female?" It is something that I have recently pondered,
and think I may have cast my gaze upon it tonight as I searched the
heavens.
When we think of God in nature we often thank God for all the beauty he has
made, which is certainly well and good. Yet if we look I
think we see God peeking out at us from behind the curtain of the forest,
rather than God looking down on it from above. And I think that what
looks out is a woman.
According to the Bible, a woman was the ultimate in God's design.
If you don't believe me go and look – she is the crown of creation, the last
and final piece of God's handiwork - handiwork that arranges itself from the
least to the most complex. Although most men would not deny that we find
women complex, we could perhaps better define our feelings towards women
with the word "mystery." Mystery, the call of the unknown -
that is what so deeply captivates us.
And it is exactly what we find when we gaze out from the peak of a mountain,
surrounded by the green velvet of endless forest, or when we find ourselves
enveloped in the gale of the rain storm and instead of resistance to its
clinging wetness we choose to exist captured and defenseless within it – that is
when we discover its rapture.
The beauty of a mountain will also call a man to action – he will climb the
mountain – and that is where we find masculinity in nature.
We find it in the toil and the struggle of
plowing the earth on a hot summer’s day, or in the challenge of scaling a rock
wall.
In the end it reveals a beauty
that we long to see – just as a woman calls a man to see her own beauty, and in
doing so he must rise to the challenge and accept the struggle of turning
himself from a boy into a man for her, the toil in the dirt will give rise to the
beauty of the fruit and flower which springs from the earth.
I love the moon, perhaps over all nature, because for me it conveys these messages
with overbearing witness to the feminine beauty of nature.
It is rare the moon reveals itself in her
entirety.
Rather to witness her full
beauty we must patiently wait for her, as she reveals more and more of herself,
although only little by little, each night.
And speaking of night, her radiance shines most brightly in it, a guide
in the darkness, yet more gentle than that of the sun, which hurts to look at.
She surrounds herself with the mystery and
the unknowns of the night, which makes us captivated by her.
In waiting for her to reveal her beauty we
are disciplining ourselves, until the final moment when we have earned her
permission to look upon her in all her glory.
When I think of the legend of the werewolf, I immediately think of a love
story, albeit a love story gone wrong, between man and woman.
When the moon, the woman, finally reveals
herself in her fullest beauty, the werewolf, traditionally portrayed as a man, is
consumed and allows himself to be perverted, changing into a monstrous beast
and overtaken by purely instinctual desire.
Unfortunately most men have an experience of falling to this beast,
myself included.
But the legend of the
werewolf shows what happens when men do not make themselves ready for a woman’s
true beauty – they instead take advantage of the beauty by turning to lustful
desires.
This is just a hunch, but I think that the lust of a man, or rather the lust
of mankind as a whole, could benefit from regular trips into nature.
As we journey through nature, whether on a hike
or even just contemplating nature from afar, we are gazing into God’s feminine
beauty.
If we perhaps let our earthly
desires be led towards Mother Earth, as God within nature, both as males and as
females, we would almost certainly find that She, the one behind it all, is
what we are truly looking for.
God made the whole earth to lay witness not just to His power of creation
but to Herself as that which lives in it.
And so, while others were sitting down to romantic dinners and celebrating
Valentine’s Day with their lover’s, I did not envy them in knowing that I was
spending the night with mine – and what a beauty She is.
