The lunar eclipse in France on Sunday night, Jan. 20, 2019 via Twitter/@Astrodunk

    As I was gazing at the fully eclipsed Moon in January 2019 I saw the roundness of the moon, a beautiful orb of red magnificence. I found myself with a new awareness in the gazing. I was in a different sense of our planet in motion with other orbs.  I was seeing the universe of Nassar, space explorers and Hubble telescopes. Gone was the flat image of the moon, the Maxfield Parrish version, of my childhood. I had grown up, and I was enveloped in the beauty and the vulnerability of careening through space as a hurtling planet, dependent on the perfection of movement between all that is out there, exquisite and radically dangerous. For a moment I was time out of time, kairos.

    As the lit full moon returned back with its mutable shadows my senses slowly returned back to flat white moonscape of familiarity. Gone now the magic of spinning discs of outer space, a visual, a seeing of us as part of a universe of turning, dancing globes, sculpted round by the black space that picked us up and threw us into the air. A continuous keeping the balls entranced in spaciousness, a coming into relationship with love that holds the magic thread of the perfect distance of harmony and resonance. Gone now a glimpse of the Holy Fool’s juggling extraordinaire of the infinite; majesty in the expression of an eclipsed light, momentarily suspending into a greater truth.

    Ahh the gift of an eclipsed moment, a pause in the great illusion, revealing the elixir of cosmic wonder and awe, and then gently returning to our smoke and mirrors of life where the moon rises and sets, along with the sun. Returning to an egocentric view in order to focus at the task at hand. Staying alive, getting out alive and returning back into that cosmic wonder with grace and gratitude…

    Copyright 2024 Sarah MacLean Bicknell | Photography by Jenn Whitney | Illustration by Nikki Jacoby