I suppose to me the regularity of the moon's cycles - the way we can predict eclipses - speaks of the constant nature of our God. I love the beauty of the Physics, the way we can trust the universe to do what it does - within the parameters of what we know. And knowing the Physics doesn't take away the ability to read into it real poetry, philosophy, spirituality. It lifts us, awes us, humbles us and leaves us - if we choose - to bow down to the long-patient, eternal hand that conceived of such things as symbols.
So I explained all this to the Beaker Folk this morning. Or tried to. Got as far as the word "Blood Moon", and the Moon Gibbon people screamed and ran out into the woods. For those of you who've not been with us for long, I should explain that, due to a misunderstanding of the term "Gibbous Moon", the Moon Gibbon people believe that there is a large supernatural gibbon on the moon. Each lunar cycle, as the moon wanes, the Gibbon eats the moon: bringing it back up as the moon waxes. But at lunar eclipses, the Gibbon Moon Folk believe, the Gibbon Moon runs amok, and the moon is dyed with the blood of slaughtered Clangers.
So tomorrow morning, if anyone gets up and the skies clear, we can expect the perfect collision of science, religion and superstitious. A beautiful natural phenomenom. The reflection that we are part of a fantastic plan. And, far off, the howls of terror and cries of "Spare the Soup Dragon!"
Happy Super Blood Moon Apocalypse.
Complete imagination failure on the part of our ancestors IMO, why blood? looks nothing like blood, why not "tomato soup Moon"?
ReplyDeleteYou're assuming our ancestors had tomato soup.
ReplyDeleteI remember seeing the last blood moon three months before the Iron Curtain fell, from the vantage point of London Bridge, and discussing its portent with an elderly person of my acquaintance. "Oh - all these things are superstitions" quoth he. "I remember seeing the greatest Aurora Borealis in my youth. People were running around Birkenhead screaming that the end of the world was nigh, but nothing happened."
ReplyDelete"When was that?" I asked the aged parent.
"1938", he said.
Dan, you're right of course, but I bet the Greeks and/or the Romans had tomato soup, Beaker folk perhaps not so much?
ReplyDeleteJadis, I guess that's the nature of living in a universe with a time dimension, stuff always happens after other stuff..
Clever as the Greeks were, and vicious genocidal gets as the Romans were, neither of them went to America and brought the tomato back.
DeleteThe moon on Monday morning looked more like oxtail to me, in any case,.