More Social Distancing Activites: Look at the Moon

 

January and February of a any year are usually the hardest for me. I have good coping mechanisms for living in such a non-sunny locale, but yesterday and this week I (and a lot of people I know, including my kids) have been slightly off kilter.  It's been nothing but grey, grey, grey since last week, when the sun shone brilliantly on the afternoon of the temple announcement!  

I always know when I get that feeling like the greyness is going to close in on me, that I need to get outside of myself and do some service.  The "Who" and the "What to do" came easily.  As I was getting ready for the day a few times this week, the names of specific people came to my mind.  I ended up texting those people and checking in on them.  Yesterday, a few more nudges came, and although it was a terribly dreary day, I found a way to get out and do something about the nudges.

It didn't lift the fog completely, but it felt good and it helped.

As I was driving back to my house after running some service errands, I saw the moon.  It was a full moon.  But it was so hazy in my night sky that it was literally almost unrecognizable as a moon!

I looked up stuff about moons today, and it turns out that every full moon has a name and a meaning assigned to it.  I guess I knew that, I just never paid much attention to it. January's full moon is named the "wolf moon".  As it is the first full moon to come after the winter solstice and the days are getting longer, it is thought to celebrate LIGHT winning over darkness.

I thought that was interesting.  Here I am trying to push back my own winter/pandemic-onset blues, and here is this moon reminding me that light has already conquered darkness, that no matter what dark things we are facing, Christ has conquered it for us and will walk with us, even if we only see him occasionally as the clouds part and even if we have to go by faith that, yes that is the moon I am looking at or yes God is with me.

I'm grateful for the reminders the He is there, that we can find in the world around us if we look with eyes to see.

Here is a calendar of the full moons for 2021.  This site outlines the names of the moons with interesting facts and gives the fun idea to do some full-moon-watching social distanced gathering.  Check it out!