Catching the Cosmos

Prayer, Betrayal, and Finding God in the Moon

Silas doesn’t have his license yet (December!), but this kid loves to drive. This morning he drove himself to school with me in the passenger seat. I audibly gasped when we turned straight into the path of the morning moon, yawning wide in a pristine Thursday sky.

Whenever this happens, I am compelled to take a photo. Compulsed. A crappy phone picture never does justice to the magic of it all, and this is a grace to everyone. Still, I cannot let a morning moon go unloved and unattended, especially one as radiant as this.

Silas completed his turn through the commuter’s maze, politely listening (maybe?) to his mother’s moon-ramble.

And then I thought, have I become a cliche?

~

Si is a night owl and also, somehow, a happy morning guy. I try not to dwell on the handful of months I have left of shuttling a kid across town, but it’s hard not to when mornings are such a quiet delight. There were years mornings were mid-to-mostly catastrophic inside this house. There were years I thought I’d fade away forever in the driver’s seat, so many hours clocked driving short routes to the middle school and back, again, again.

The kids (can I still call them that?) are changing like time-lapse videos, the ones where a seed sprouts, climbs, and fruits, all in under thirty seconds. Meanwhile, I’m in slow motion, doing my best to pull an “all-dayer” without a cat nap¹ to get me through.

After I dropped Si off Si dropped himself off, I decided to listen to my prayer app on my drive to work, rather than another depressing news podcast. (Counterweights!)

But I am telling you, I was still distracted by that moon² lounging in the ether.

Somewhere over the past 10 years, the sky and all her jewels became a big deal to me. Mulling it over this morning, I tried to pin down how this happened.

Me (thinking): The moon represents God, to me.

Me (thinking): But wait, isn’t that bad?

Me: (flashing back to when people disparaged “liberal” churches/people by saying things like, “They worship nature, for Heaven’s sake!”)

Me (thinking): Am I New-Age? AM I ACCIDENTALLY PAGAN?