The Moon of Good and Evil

All I wanted to do was find the moon. Not just any ole' moon. The Super Moon. If I missed it Saturday night I'd have to wait 18 years to see it again. My camera batteries will be dead by then so I decided to chase it while I could.

After much ado with photography paraphernalia, charging replacements, getting ice cream for the road and stopping for gas, I drove out of town. Way way out of town on back roads. Full of nothing but darkness. Clouds. Ominous clouds. Just like my thoughts on the day's attack on Libya  - the certain beginning of a new war. And no matter how hard I try I can't forget the families buried alive on Japanese hillsides of mud with no dignity or proper burial or even time to run. My mood matched the darkness of the late night atmosphere.

I might as well turn this car around I thought. So many strange clouds. Too many to shoot a decent moon. I almost gave up and went home. And then...a peek through and another and another. Yes!

I found a deserted church parking lot around and waited to see what the magnificent spectacle in the sky would reveal as the clouds began to move back and forth at a slow and spooky pace.

I could almost reach up and touch the eerie formations floating in hot white light permeating the oppressive southern sky.

But what did I have to fear?

Do you see what is behind my car?
And in front of my car were three crosses standing guard at the bottom of the hill. 

Do I know how to pick a good spot or what?

Little did I know that I was about to be blessed by the Moon of Good and Evil. You know, this is not the first time I've been confronted with peculiar clouds. Every time there is upheaval in my life, I dream weird ghostly dreams and seem to pick up signs from the Universe. I'm just stumbling along in my pencil skirt and wham (!) a sign falls out of the sky. Read this post from 2008. I dare you.

But back to the Biblical moon. The praying man in the first picture you see above was a comforting presence in the sky. It was peaceful. Maybe he's kneeling before the moon and praying for peace. Or lighting a peace pipe. Or honoring the Universe and all God's creations, like the powerful SuperMoon hanging in the sky before our collective eyes on Saturday night. The world could use a little good news ya know. I decided to hold that thought.
And I was content to watch him for awhile and eat my ice cream up on the hill of the Jesus church until I saw.....

 THIS

Then I just wanted to go home and hide under my bed.
Wouldn't you??!

Until I realized that sometimes big bad things loom heavy before our eyes in the darkness, maybe bigger than anything we've ever had to deal with before, breathing large and making us weary. The whole world seems to be colliding with travail and smoke at once. And it's in those moments of hovering doom that we forget the lights that have gone before us and the centuries of faith that stand behind us, gently nudging our paths with voices from the past - "That's it. Walk a little braver. Stand a little straighter. You can do it. It will be alright."
  So much does the amnesia of fear paralyze us that neither can we hear the deeply buried truths we've learned to call our own, the ones that stay us in crisis and keep us from tumbling off a cliff. Those lights - you know them - you feel them -  they guide us from deep down inside and illuminate even the scariest of paths.  Whatever demons lurk in the dark times of life, light can always dispel.

I ain't scared of no monster moon.

Photography credit: Mimi Lenox 3/19/2011