The gift of moonlight

As a child, my favorite time of the 24 hours began at twilight on nights of the full moon. The heat of the summer day slowly dissipated, lightning bugs blinked their tiny beacons near and far, and the moonlight gave a silver gleam to everything in sight. On the clearest evenings, the light was so brilliant that it created knife-edged shadows. In Winter, the full moon's beams added silver outlines to the leafless trees and made the frost sparkle.

I was born at the end of June, a Cancer, under the sign of the Moon. I've always been a moon child. I could (and still can) fall asleep in the midst of a room-full of talking people, with the radio or TV playing. But let me be asleep in a quiet dark room and have a moonbeam fall across my bed and my eyes will pop open as if a wake-up switch has been thrown in my brain. For a time in my 30's, when I was a single mother of three working two jobs, having gotten my children to bed, I would lie on the lounge out in the back yard, enjoying the quiet under the full moon. A neighbor saw me one evening and asked what I was doing. I told him I was getting a moon tan.

I'm still a moon child and try to catch as many moon rays as I can. Which means I was truly delighted this past Tuesday evening while I was at the Garden. I had made myself get up, get dressed, and go to the Garden library for my volunteer hours.
.... A few moments after arriving, one of the workers finishing the installation of the Christmas... excuse me... Holiday decorations in the Reading Room offered to show us a project she had just finished and placed in the cabinet holding treasured floral porcelains. I looked at the figures in the cabinet and my reaction was 'so?' Then she pointed out that the largest, sitting on the bottom shelf, was one she had created from real dried plant material from the Garden. It is breath-taking, especially juxtaposed with the porcelain porcelains. I spent the rest of my hours there pointing out my favorite 'fake porcelain' to everyone who visited the library.
.... I discovered that the evening was Member Night (free admission). The air was just crisp enough to feel Christmas-ey and only a slight breeze was blowing. I decided to stay and walk through the Garden's Fest of Lights. I treated myself to a bowl of Red Pepper & Crab soup in the Cafe as I watched darkness descend and the lights start to glow. As I walked across to the Conservatory, I realized that there was a full moon! It was a soft golden orb, in a cobalt sky with gauzy clouds seeming to hang in place, throwing a golden haze over the Garden. Heavenly.

I've been taught that in Heaven there will be no night... the radiance of the Father will out-shine the sun. I hope that in a small corner, I'll be able to find quiet and moonlight.