Moonlight

It is interesting to “reflect” upon moonlight. If you live in an urban area, you may not think about it much, but almost everyone has been out in the country at some point; perhaps at a camp where the streetlights were not so prominent. Perhaps you, like me, have stopped and simply marveled at the illumination of the moon. When the moon is hidden or only partially visible because of planetary rotation or cloud cover, the night is dark and one has to be careful about finding one’s way. But when the moon is full on a clear and cloudless night, the earth is flooded with a soft luminous glow. It is lovely.

Something about moonlight inspires us. We see it as romantic; the stuff of love songs and poetry. Myths and legends grow up around it. One of Beethoven’s more famous pieces of music, Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-Sharp Minor, was dubbed the Moonlight Sonata by music critic Ludwig Rellstab more than thirty years after it was first published. Rellstab is reported to have compared this enchanting musical movement to “moonlight shining upon Lake Lucerne.” Beethoven himself included the phrase "Quasi una fantasia" (Italian: Almost a fantasy) in the title. Somehow it seems appropriate.

Given the romantic mystique we find so fascinating about moonlight, how curious to think that the moon actually has no light at all of its own. Left to its own devices, it is a cold, dark, forbidding place. Without the sun to illuminate it, the moon would be entirely invisible to the naked eye. All of that lovely, soft, magical moonlight that shines upon the earth is actually a reflection of sunlight being bounced off a lifeless orb. How remarkable that a sun so hot and a moon so cold should be combined to bless the earth with such wonderful results!

May you know yourself to be blessed today, whether by light or love or music, in a way that your soul will recognize to be so wonderful it is “almost a fantasy.”

Posted by Carman