I See the Moon...and the Moon...

I See the Moon…and the Moon…

 

By John W. Vander Velden

 

 

Most nights before I turn in, I stroll in my back yard for a few minutes.  On overcast nights I look up at the clouds that darken the night.  Filling my yard with foreboding shadows.  Sometimes on stormy nights I see lightning streak across the dark sky, or if the weather has moved away, flashes explode silently beyond the horizon, igniting the thunderheads in the distance.  This week, once again, I heard the call of coyotes near and far.  Many nights this summer I have heard katydids and tree frogs serenade the night.   

Those walks are only brief moments, a time I get a bit of air, while Cloey, our little dog, does the same and more.  But on clear nights I seek out the shadows, the places where the beam of our outside light does not reach.  There I allow my eyes to study the heavens, the stars and the moon.  We have had several clear nights this month, and I have watched the moon day to day.  I understand the moon’s phases, the whys and hows.  I understand the sequence of waxing and waning, of the moon’s apparent growth and shrinking.  At October’s beginning I witnessed the thinnest crescent…just a silver sliver dangling above the neighbor’s fencerow.  Each night I make a point of looking toward the growing moon a little higher in the western sky.  It has passed its mid point now for it sets about an hour later each night.  

I think about the moon.  About the ageless travels it has made around our globe.  I think about the uncountable generations that have pointed with awe at the great light of the night sky.  The moon seems ever changing…but the important word here is seems.  I am sure that the moon like everything else does change, but those variations are so slow, eons would pass before any of us might notice.  But the moon waxes and wanes.  Times it hides from us, but it does not really go away.  The moon continues on its journey around the earth.  It travels at the pace it has since before history and will do so long after I am a memory faded by time. 

I take comfort in the moon.  It reminds me that there are things bigger than I am.  It reminds me that my problems may come and go…but the moon.  You see the moon reminds me of GOD.  Not that the moon is GOD, for it certainly is not!  But the moon is a symbol of GOD’s power and majesty.  GOD set the moon in motion, a beacon in the night sky, which always seems to be changing but is not.  It’s we that have changed.  Just as we see the moon through different phases, we view everything from a changing perspective.  We shade our reality by what we believe is true at any given moment. 

When I consider the moon, I think about the things that seem to be happening in my life.  And know that things do change.  But hidden within those changes are the constants.  The rock solid things that really matter…love…good…and GOD.  That no matter how things change those things never will.  But the moon also teaches me to be open to change.  To see within those changes the solid foundation I know is there. 

I trust, when I wander the yard tonight the moon will be about fifteen degrees east of its position last night, whether I see it or not.  Clouds might hide its face from me, but that does not mean it is not in the night sky.  And so it is with my life.  I trust that even in life’s changes GOD has a plan for me…today…and if he wills it, tomorrow. My job is to figure out what I should do to complete that plan.  And when I figure that out, to do it.  That when the moon sets in the wee hours and a new day arrives I tackle the changing tasks set before me.  To do what I can to make the world, we share, a little better.  And through my actions reveal GOD’s love by caring about people.  It seems simple enough, but it isn’t.  But the moon is growing and even when its phases lead toward its hiding, I should be growing.  I should be taking the changes each day brings as another lesson about the constants that do not change.  

So I see the moon and in it the constant of GOD’s power…and the moon sees me dealing with all the changes of my existence.  Tomorrow comes and I will be ready….

 

(770 Words)  10-13-2016

On a Starry Night

On a Starry Night 

An Excerpt from Misty Creek, a novel

By John W. Vander Velden

 

Later, much later, she awoke in the dark, in a strange room, in a strange place, deep in a strange land.  Elizabeth drew the chair to an open window.  There she sat looking out into the night.  Even now Elizabeth could feel the slight touch of the breeze against her skin, the wind that seemed never to cease.  On that breeze came the sounds of the night.  The sounds of creatures near and far, creatures she had never heard before.  Odd short hoots, an owl of some sort she felt certain.  A distant wolf like howl similar to what she had heard earlier set the dogs of the community off to barking.  Insect’s sounds, crickets and katydids, filled her ears.  And above it all was the sky, a cloudless sky, simply ablaze with countless points of light.  Those lights were more than stars, more than any stars she had ever witnessed.  Looking upward took her breath away and caused a tremble deep within.  She understood, at least a little, of what the pastor had said.  And seeing those stars in that canvas of black, Elizabeth found she could not look away for several minutes.

Elizabeth sat there her mind flooded with so many thoughts. She drew a breath as she considered just how far from home she had wandered.  She went back to nights years ago, her mother brushing out the tangles in her hair.  A time when many thought she would never become a lady.  Those days she could wrestle Mitchel Dogerty to submission.  But she had not been a child for a long time, and though she had not lived all those years in her parent’s house on Elm Street, having taught for three years in the small Ohio town of London, the ache of homesickness filled her.   Closing her eyes a moment she could almost smell breakfast’s bacon greeting her with the sun as it slipped through the white curtains of her yellow bedroom.  The sight of her father in his paper.  The smell of coffee mixed with his aftershave when she greeted him each morning.  How far away she felt.  But far away was what she had wanted.  Something alien to the world that had always been her life.  Now as she opened her eyes to the diamond sparkled sky, she wondered if she had entered a world too different. Elizabeth swallowed as she looked across the open prairie.  Sitting there allowing the gentle breeze to pass her cheeks and move an errant strand of hair, the thoughts of home seemed to be pushed aside by the children she had met here on the boundary of humanity.  There was something familiar in them, something that all children seemed to have in common.  She smiled at the thought and sat by the window until the drowsiness came.  Softly it came.  It came with a calmness she had not felt, not felt in a very long time.  A smile formed on her tired lips, and in the dark, the weary teacher made her way to the bed, and in it found sleep waiting.

(515 Words)