The Light At Our Backs

Lunar eclipses have a magical quality. On a frigid night a few years ago, my family and I watched through one of our upstairs windows as the moon showed a scar, then started to disappear, and finally vanished. The absolute darkness of the country night made it seem as though everything outside the window vanished right along with that big white moon.

But lunar eclipses also have a sadness to them. They occur, of course, because planetary rotations place the earth between the sun and the moon. In a sense, they therefore happen because we stand with our back to the light. And when that is where we find ourselves, we have nothing before us but the cold and boundless void.

The season of Lent has a similar sense to it. As we turn and turn through that season we arrive in the shadows of Good Friday, the day when the world turned its back to the light, though, alas, not the only or final day it has done so. So we move through these days anticipating the lightless nights that lay ahead, perhaps fearing them, perhaps more than a little.

We take comfort in knowing the eclipse will pass and the darkness will break. And we can stand and wait for that to happen. Or we can turn ourselves in a different direction, facing the light that never really disappeared at all, bathing in the warmth that beckoned us all along.