Illuminating the Dark Side

The bells from the Carmelite Monastery rang me up and out of my comfy bed, my bare feet hitting the cold tile of the kitchen floor making their way toward my morning brew. My eyes pried open by a glow peeking out of the twilight dawn—it's the moon! The light of the sky in perfection, I fumble to retrieve my "big girl" camera which is under lock and key—I needed to zoom in for this one. My feet still bare, pitter-patter out to the sidewalk to find Mr. Moon nearing the end of his waning cycle—the silver sliver hanging by an invisible thread in the sky, a classic cliché image—I take it anyway. It's my thing and I can't wait to share it with the world. Okay that means my peeps in the social media. Immediately brought it up for viewing on the big computer screen for processing before taking its internet flight. I could stop here with another pretty picture of the moon's face, however there was an instant connection with something more the moon was showing me, that I would have missed with anything other than the powerful optics and superior glass of my camera lens.

With our naked eye we usually only see the sunlit side of the moon, at any phase—but with the power of my lens not only could I see the full shadow side, I faintly could make out the patterns of facial-features we all have come to know and love as "the man in the moon." And I thought, "look at that—the moon, even in its crescent-sliver of illumination, has the power and presence to share its light with its dark side." I've seen this before, not my first shoot of the moon, but today it resonated as a symbol for the phases we experience in our own moods and emotions. That no matter how dark we may feel at times, there always exists a glimmer of light dangling like the moon, illuminating our hearts.