The Full Leo Moon

Last night, I watched the full moon rising, it's light, liquid and platinum, filtering through the trees, silvering the brown grass of winter, casting it's spell on the night.

I've heard that if you want to find joy, focus on the things you love. So, early this morning, long before it was light, I poured my first cup of coffee, opened my bedroom shutters, went back to bed, and by the light of a tangerine candle I watched the moon set.

It descended slowly, just as it had risen, through the bare, black limbs of the trees, making them shimmer with an illusion of warmth in the icy morning. Moonlight beamed down on my cove, sending it's sparkle across the sheet of ice that covered the water from shore to shore, it's light, brushing the frozen ripples of its surface, inking in the cracks, delineating the swirls created by the ebb and flow of the water's currents. A ghostly paintbrush moving black and silver paint across my world.

My world, and the world that belongs to all of us. I thought of friends and family, hundreds and thousands of miles away, who share this moon with me; who may be watching it's splendor, high in the sky, or sinking in a far away early morning somewhere. From every hemisphere. And, in this moment of peaceful beauty, in the glow of my tangerine candle, I fall in love with the world and everyone in it.

When I was young, I would lie awake at night and sometimes, on the outskirts of the city, I could hear the distant roar of lion. Perhaps a full-bodied black-maned cat - filling the night with its rumble. And I wonder if perhaps on those nights, like tonight, here in Virginia, there was a full Leo moon lighting the pale grasslands plains he roamed.

I think of pilots, 30,000 feet above the world, criss-crossing the atmosphere with the light of this moon glancing off silver wings, and feeling its beauty. I think of sailors on the night time watch, perhaps thinking of ancient mariner's who travelled these same waterways, guided by the lights of the firmament, I think of a Bedouin traveler, deep in the desert, smoking outside his tent, watching the sharp silhouette of his camels in the moon light, and I am in awe of the power of the Universe and its ability to bring us all together in its magnificence.

I hope its a good and peaceful day for you, my friends, and everyone everywhere. And tonight, I hope you feel that magnificence as the moon comes up, aligning with Jupiter and calming Uranus. It's bound to be a perfect night.