If you have to have a sleepless night, try to make it when the sky is crisp and clear and the moon is round and bright. I know you can’t order insomnia delivered to your door, like Netflix, to be saved and played at a convenient time, or have it stored in your night-table like a favorite book to reach for as you wish. But, I offer this as a heads-up anyway. During your next unbidden mid-night excursion, take a peak outside. If you are lucky, you will see a radiant moon casting shadows on your lawn, or street, or windowsill. It is an eternal monthly re-run that never seems to grow old.

There are several good things about a full (or even near full, ie, gibbous) moon. It is luminous. Moonglow has its own charm. It is a soft, white light, without the intensity of glare or heat. You can gaze directly at the moon and be swept away by a close encounter with a celestial object no less stunning than those millions of light year away. Yet we tend to degrade our heavenly neighbor, and take it for granted, overlook its awesomeness because it is always there, like a piece of furniture we learn to step around, seeing but not always attending to it.

It is pock-marked with a faded, jagged pattern of dark, not quite always discernible, not quite identifiable, and therefore endlessly entertaining. Is it an old man, as we westerners imagine? Or a rabbit, as easterners imagine? A dragon, moose, woman as other traditions suggest?

It stays up in the sky all night, rising close to sunset and setting close to sun rise. So no matter what time you take your mid-night perambulations, the moon is there to keep you company.

It is amazing to see how fast it travels across the sky. It reminds us of the constant movement of the earth, and our otherwise invisible, unfelt, hurtling and twirling through space that we are mostly oblivious to; the majesty of the Milky Way and the awesomeness of creation far beyond our precious planet.

It coaxes contemplation, pulls us beyond the woes and worries and drama of our lives and reconnects us to the grand drama of Life itself. For we are forever a part of that. It is humbling, and to my mind warming, to remember that this same cool light of the moon is the one our ancestors saw, wrote about, sang about, took comfort in, thousands of years ago. In the dim, reflected light of the moon, we can often see much further than in the blazing light of the sun.

For more information on the phases of the moon, check out:

http://home.hiwaay.net/~krcool/Astro/moon/moonphase/

http://www.calculatorcat.com/moon_phases/moon_phases.phtml