Full Moon Prayer — for Lovers of Darkness Too!

The sun is not yet up.
The moon, not yet down.
I come to sit,
my shadow and I,
in radiance of natural fullness.

Teach me, I pray:
That I may let life
so radiate out of me,
wholly at one
with my nature too.

And let me remember always
that but for the darkness within
I could never know the beauty of light
nor be in-formed or inspired
by the stars who love the night too.

Reflections:
I am a lover of the moon. Perhaps because I am a lover of light, and of darkness too.
Of course I love the sun as well, but its blazing light is too fierce to stare into. Its fierceness  drives darkness into shadows as though into hiding. While the moon itself might seem to be a lover of the light and of darkness too, holding each in a kind of mutual regenerative balance.
I seek that balance. I am tired of fighting against myself and the world. I am tired of fighting the shadows of my own anger and rage, of my fears and insecurities, of my hunger for fame and attention and for the peace of anonymity too. I am tired of fighting against the Janus faces of evil and of swearing allegiance to the god of self-serving goodness. I am tired of looking outside myself for affirmation of the potency of the life living within.
I grow tired of strengthening the very things I dislike in myself and in others by fighting against them. One would think our worship of antibiotics might have taught us by now that we cannot destroy our inner terrorists, our shames and addictions, or those in the world by provoking their immune systems. But we are too self-absorbed with the magic of our technological prowess to look beyond the mirror we stare into.
Possessing the technological capacity to unleash “fire and furry unlike anything the world has ever seen before,” possessing the harnessed powers of the sun to unleash “shock and awe” upon our enemies, to strike them with drone like lightning from the avenging hand of Zeus, we forget that such unleashed righteous blindness kills innocents; makes terrorists of us and propagates seeds of hatred throughout the world.
We fail to see how we see the world through the selective placement of our attention, how light and darkness are partners in a cosmic dance of creation. And in failing to notice the creative powers of our perception, we fail to own responsibility for our part in the dance.
I want to know how to hold this dance in a cauldron of love and compassion, for myself and for others. I want to know how to be at one with life, to drink from that spring’s source so deeply I leave nothing within untouched by the transformational power of this potion.
These lines from Rainer Maria Rilke come to mind:

“If we surrendered
to earth’s intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.”

This poem and post were originally drafted in the nights preceding a full moon visit into Canyon de Chelly, co-hosting a learning journey adventure with Cheryl Slover-Linett of the non-profit Leadfeather.org.  We were blessed with clear skies and a dance of light and shadow in the steep walled canyon, day and night. Until we can see this same dance within our own psyche and soul, we will be ruled by the darkness of shame and denial, by the archetypes ruling self-destruction.
The ruling darkness of our times makes it seem unlikely we might make this transformational journey collectively. But then, that is not our responsibility. What belong to you and I is to make this journey—personally; this is our greatest possible contribution to the collective. And it is in this journey of return, from head to our hearts, somatically coming home to our senses, that we can come to claim the birthrights of belonging, of innate worthiness, of wholeness, as our natural lineage.
This journey requires nothing less than a surrender and embrace of a deep, ancient and living intelligence in which the trees and canyons, the stars and the moon again become our teachers and lovers. And what a joy they are to know!Full Moon setting in Canyon de Chelly, from base of Spider Rock, 10/2017