Moonstruck

There was a full moon last night- or more precisely, very early this morning here in the UK, at 04.13 British Summer Time; make the most of that time zone for in less than a month it will be back to our standard time zone of GMT and the long hours of winter darkness beckon.

But why fear winter? I was way off in the land of nod when our earth's diminutive brother, lifeless yet full of power and light, reached another peak, but I'd caught a glimpse of it just after midnight and likewise earlier in the week on the Sussex Coast. In both cases, it left me awe-struck, or should I say moonstruck.

I don't know how many full moons I must have seen as my own seasons of life have come and gone as our terrestrial ball has spun and orbited in space for over four decades. Looked at like this, I am a mere pinhole camera, taking snapshots of a tiny moment in the eons of the universe. I am a crude observer, trying to capture the wonder of it all, yet still experiencing joy, surprise and peace much as the ancients must have felt too at another month's passing and the coming of the full moon.

No matter how much science, technical progress and the discoveries particularly of the late twentieth century have altered our view of the lunar landscape, it has yet to explain beauty. Science cannot answer why the moon over water is one of the most romantic sights man or woman can ever see. Who needs elaborate special effects and artificial lighting when what is really a giant reflector in the night sky can offer more than the finest film camera can ever see.

You've never needed the cinema, TV or VDU screen to marvel at the moon. One thing I was, shamefully, unaware of until this Thursday, when BBC Two repeated a fascinating documentary about our only natural satellite, is that the full moon appears the same at every point on earth. No corner of our globe escapes it's benevolent beaming.

It's been over a mo(o)nth since I last wrote to this blog- in fact, just slightly longer than the lunar cycle. During that period, one group of believers has celebrated the harvest, as many Christian churches have yearly been doing since the Victorian era though echoing a tradition dating back to ancient times. Another faith, Islam, has begun it's holy month of fasting, Ramadan, the duration of which is intimately tied in with the phases of the moon. And for the third of the patriarchal religions, the Jewish community, a new year has just begun and the old one has been remembered and people have repented en masse as remembering the creation of the earth with joy at Rosh Hashanna, and then the most solemn festival of the year at Yom Kippur passes. Long may these things be observed.

As a now-departed senior friend of mine once said, we're all different- and thank goodness! We differ in our beliefs, our observances, our creeds, our hopes, our dreams. We sometimes argue about them passionately, though mercifully mostly short of war. Nevertheless, in the past couple of days, a respected former British Foreign Secretary has incurred the wrath of some people of faith for daring to express his own opinions about the difficulties of communicating with some of the his constituents who choose to wear the burkah, the face veil worn by some Muslim women.

Yet we still all inhabit the same, fragile, delicate, beautiful, complex, fascinating spaceball which we call The Earth, and watch its bosom buddy the moon. Bound together by their mutually dependent physical forces, and our planet's eco-systems, its climate, its rhythms, its tides. We did not create these so how can we dare we allow ourselves to be a vehicle of its destruction.

But sadly, man turns too late to reason so often, to understand the vitalness of co-dependence, and the special gift of life we have been given, by some power we people of faith choose to believe in while others feel no need of. Lunar love-in turns to lunacy when a crazed gunman slaughters five beautiful little girls in a peaceful Pennsylvania community with the painfully ironic name of Paradise.

Paradise lost. It lost the bodies of young lives who might yet have contributed something beautiful to this earth. It robbed its mothers and its fathers of the heart-warming joy of raising their daughters and replaced it with the obscenity of burying them before they'd even reached their teens. Can anything be salvaged from the senselessness of acts like this which are seldom out of the news from more than a few months?

As long as the moon shines, I believe it can. As long as man has hope in his heart of a better tomorrow, is sorry for all his wrongdoing to others and gives thanks for what this wonderful world is and can be, there is the possibility of redemption. I believe the outworking of that is found in the life of one man, who came that we all might have life, in all its fulness- but how he chooses to deliver that promise, is the stuff of faith.

BBC One television, long associated with a circling globe against a sea of space as its logo, has today launched a new series of channel idents to a mixed reception. I've seen about four of them so far already, including a scene of some fishermen somewhere in Asia against a moon-drenched sky glimmering on a silvery sea. It's a simple yet powerful image- as delightful to a tiny child as the most world-weary adult. It reminded me of how I felt at midnight yesterday, as the clouds of night were kissed by the moon of day. The powers of darkness had once again been overcome by pure, white, milky light.

As surely as we have faith that the waning moon will again be full, may we always be awed - or rather, changed- by the Light of the World, as nearer and nearer draws the time when the Earth shall be filled with the glory of God, as the waters cover the sea.