Open Your Eyes, Look Up to the Skys

We look, and do not see. Our eyes are open, but we do not perceive.

Coming home the other night, my middle son and daughter were in the car. Late return from harp lessons and choir practise. We were listening to one of the excellent mix-CDs I've gotten over the years from relatives (I love being related to people with good taste). My daughter was happy, bouncing, cheery. It was late, and my son was tired. He wondered aloud if perhaps his sister might . . . contain her exuberance.

A teaching moment!

I asked my son to please listen to me, just for a bit, to give me his attention. I told him that I wanted my children to seek beauty in the world, to love aesthetic moments and wring the joy from each day. We live in amazing time, in a wonderful world. For all the evil and ugliness, there, too, is goodness. I want them all to bravely embrace happiness, to not give into ennui, to feign maturity by manifesting the popular trend of ironic disengagement. So then, when we encounter someone else who is full of happiness about something, I would hope mightily that we can appreciate the vigor of their happiness, even if their expression seems to us immature, shrill, or silly. Love life, avoid sarcasm, allow others to love life.

He quickly countered with a personal memory, of when he was the one who had been shushed for his exuberance, asking why HE was told to be quiet. I told him, honestly, that in that situation, we were wrong to scold him, that we should have taken the higher road and joined him in his joy of life. I promised him, the next time it happened, I would try harder to be happy for his happiness.

We listened to the music, and could occasionally hear my daughter happily humming and bouncing along.

But then we got home. Late, dark, quiet, tired. Both I and my son had arm-loads of stuff to take in, things to toss in the recycling bins, were ready, PAST ready, for bed. As we are moving away from the car, drudging to the house, looking forward to just turning off the light, my daughter is still standing where she got out of the car.

"What is that?" She whispered intensely, looking up.

I was || close to tiredly, exasperatedly groaning, "It's the full moon, just like the other 160-some-odd full moons you've seen." But, my words echoed in my ears. Be delighted by the delight of others. So, I put away my exasperation, and I turned my eyes sky-ward. . .

and . . .

and gasped. Beauty. The pure, piercing, amazing glory of a once-in-a-lifetime celestial event. I was dumb-founded.

After a second, I found words. I spoke reverently. "That, sweetie, is a moonbow. I've never seen one before. I suspect most people go their whole life without seeing one. Now quick, go tell your Mom if she is still awake."

I had over the years seen plenty of auras around moons (especially in the winter; I held them as personal harbingers of heavy snowfall the following day, something I was happy to see on a Sunday through Thursday night during the school year). You know, those glowing, circular halos? Never anything like this. The ephemeral, translucent circle of light around the moon, visible when there are wispy clouds or high fog, that was nice. But this . . . wow.

You could see the colors in the arc "above" the moon. Clear, ruby red, muting into orange and then a yellow band in the middle. Then, flowing into a greenish striation until it moved bluely through purple and away into the dark night sky. It glowed, almost visibly humming, color against the deep black of space.



I hurried in, made sure my son got the word to go back out and look at it. Joined Mrs. L on the front lawn to look. In a few minutes, the clouds shifted, and it was just a normal aura again.

Have a beautiful day. Be sure to allow the beauty seen by others to draw out your smiles, too.