Awaiting Mid-Autumn: Moon in Clouds

Updated: Jun 10, 2022

11th day of the 8th moon in the year of the water dragon.

Photo Credit: John Garozze
http://www.jagwah.blogspot.com

Tonight it was cloudy. When I first went out to the park for my after dinner walk, I couldn’t see the moon at all. But by the time I was done, an hour later, there it was. A slightly bigger than half moon, fully revealed.

Jallaluddin Rumi, b.1207-1273, the Persian Sufi has a wonderful verse about this gradual unmasking. Here it is –

Last night the moon

Last night the moon came dropping its clothes in the street.

I took it as a sign to start singing,

to fall up into the bowl of sky.

The bowl breaks. Everywhere is falling everywhere.

There’s nothing else to do.

Here’s the new rule:

Break the wineglass

Fall towards the glassblower’s breath.

This poem can also be read as a metaphor for how we must shed our pretensions and defenses before we can embrace the real.

What pretensions should we get rid of as individuals and as a society, before we can open up to the infinite and feel the wonder of spirit in us?

Have a think. Don’t be shy to share. Help celebrate the fullness of the Mid-Autumn moon together.