“You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch.” Edgar Mitchell, astronaut and moon walker
On December third, we witnessed a “super moon.” Before the popular media got their hands on them, the astronomers referred to perigee full moons and perigee new moons. From sixteen century French, it derived from ancient Greek meaning simply “close around the earth.” We name any full moon that comes within ten percent of the closest approach the moon in its orbit makes to earth a “super moon.”. Closer means slightly larger and brighter in our view, and stronger tides, both high and low.
What is somewhat unusual this time around is that there will be three of them consecutively. The full moons on January second and again on the thirty first will be perigee moons. The second full super moon in January will also be a blue moon, the second full moon in a month. And to complete the January 31’st trifecta, there will be a full lunar eclipse, so super, blue and eclipsed. Quite a free show. Hope for a clear winter night in an area without a lot of light pollution. A party would be in order.
When full on a cloudless night, our closest neighbor with the enigmatic smile lights our way. Unique in our solar system with its relative size to a planet, our moon greatly intensifies the tides of our great oceans. Without it, the sun would still cause tides, but not nearly as pronounced. Those tides have a profound effect on the rotation of the earth, slowing it from its early cycle to our familiar twenty-four-hour spin. Without the moon we would see sunrise every ten hours.
“From moonlit place to place,
The sacred moon overhead
Has taken a new phase.” The Cat and The Moon, W.B Yeats
From Genesis 1: God made two great lights, the greater light to govern the day, and the lesser light to govern the night. He made the stars also. I’ve wondered what the shepherds guarding their flocks and saw the angels announcing the birth of Jesus did when there weren’t miracles about. They must have welcomed the full moonlit nights to help them in their assigned watch. I wonder if they understood the moon reflected the sun? Most ancient peoples thought the world was round, but most thought our globe was the center of the universe, and the array of the stars and planets revolved around us.
Only sixty-six years, less than a lifetime, separated the first powered flight of the Wright brothers and Neil Armstrong’s “one great leap” on the surface on the moon. Only since then, have human beings viewed images of our home planet from another celestial object. Out of all the human beings that have lived over tens of thousands of years, only we that have lived in the last half century have been graced with this revelation.
Our perspective, literally our worldview, has lifted, never to be the same. In that same sense, our view of the shepherds, the angels, even the birth of Jesus has subtly shifted as well. We see what angels see, but what those fearful shepherds never did. They were calmed by the angels, “Do not be afraid.” Are our fears, too, put to rest? Or has the view revealed from the moon of our luminous and fragile blue orb changed us in some way we have yet to comprehend?
“Minuit, chrétiens, c’est l’heure solennelle,
Où l’Homme-Dieu descendit jusqu’à nous
Pour effacer la tache originelle.” French lyrics for “Oh Holy Night”, traditional Christmas Carol [i]
“Midnight, Christians, it’s the solemn hour. When God-Man descended to us….”
I recently learned reading one of the brilliant speeches of the late Justice Antonin Scalia[ii] that the disparaging English word used to marginalize a group of people, “cretins,” originates from the French. Unlike us (as seen in far too many social media posts), the French originally named a group of severely developmentally challenged residents of the Alps “Chrétiens” or Christians in the fourteenth century, not to demean them or Christianity, but to remind all that human beings, all human beings, irrespective of their status, their gifts or their net worth are inheritors of the dignity of man. “Imago Dei.” Made in the image of God. How many of us believe that in our hearts today?
Yet, is this not the center of the mystery of Christmas? And how, dear readers, are Christians perceived in fashionable society today? Let Justice Scalia speak for himself, far more eloquently than I could ever hope to.
“It has often occurred to me, however, that for quite different reasons the equivalence of the words Christians and cretin makes a lot of sense. To be honest about it, that is the view of Christians – or at least traditional Christians – taken by sophisticated society in modern times. One can be sophisticated and believe in God – heck, a First Mover is at least as easy to believe in as Big Bang triggered by nothingness. One can even be sophisticated and believe in a personal God, a benevolent Being who loves mankind, so long as that Being does not intrude too ridiculously into the world – by working so-called miracles, for example, or by limiting human behavior in inconvenient ways…. But to believe in what might be called “traditional” Christianity is something else. To believe that Jesus Christ was God? … Or to believe that he was born of a virgin! (Well, I mean, really!) That he actually, physically, rose from the grave?!?…”
Read the original, more comprehensive in scope. I strongly recommend this book for some opportunity to think deeply about what we may have avoided thinking about deeply. His point here is that simple and unsophisticated is not by definition wrong, and may indeed be the truth, however incongruent and inconvenient that may be for us. Be advised, though, the recognition, and our place in that truth, may call us to honest introspection and change.
Have these times of ours, so confusing, with an ever-present din of anger and fear, conflict and loneliness, concealed in its foggy night something we have lost, and can ill afford to misplace?
“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
“The Fellowship of the Ring,” J.R.R. Tolkien
[i] ‘Oh Holy Night’ Luciano Pavarotti, 1978 Montreal
[ii] “The Christian as Cretin,” from “Scalia Speaks: Reflections on Law, Faith and Life Well Lived.” Antonin Scalia, Christopher Scalia and Edward Whelan, Crown Forum, Penguin Random House, 2017.
Quo Vadis Blog 