Mad Over the Moon

A continuing story in the news over the past several years has been about some people being a bit mad over the moon.  Mad -- angry, that is -- over the decision not to try to send astronauts to the moon again, or even set up a colony there.  The anger has, admirably, been expressed with civility, but the underlying feelings of disappointment and frustration are detectable

It is with a different sense of the word "mad" that people down through history have been mad over the moon:   "Mad" in the sense of enthusiastic about it and adoring it.  Poets, playwrights, and songwriters have frequently either been enamored by the moon or had a crush on it.  People today know the line "Shine on, shine on, harvest moon," even if they can't sing the rest of the song.  As well as the phrase "by the light of the silvery moon" from another love song.  In Hinduism, one symbolic expression of God's love for the human race are classic paintings in which Krishna meets the delighted milkmaids under the light of the moon.

"Violinist in the Moonlight"
 by Hans Thoma

Not that the moon has always been associated with faithfulness.  In Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, in a moonlit setting, Romeo is on the verge of swearing by the moon to express his love to Juliet.  But she replies, "Oh, swear not by the moon, th' inconstant moon, / That monthly changes in her circled orb."  Despite such occasional misgivings, the human race has usually found the moon to be a model of reliability in its recurring phases from new moon to full.  The nearly monthly period of the phases have, understandably, been associated with a woman's menstrual periods.  That feminine association emerged, along with a sense of the moonlight's softness compared to the intense male sun.

Thanks to modern science, we know, however, that the moon is not that soft in its power of gravity, being the primary force making the tides, which in turn stimulate the ocean-shore life of birds and mollusks and more.  The writer Jeffrey Sobosan makes an interesting juxtaposition of our scientific and romantic attachments to the moon.  Reflecting upon the countless bodies in our galaxy, he writes that the moon is "the only one on which human feet have walked," but is also the "best known of our companions in the universe."

A grandmother I know tells me a story about her four-year-old granddaughter.  The two of them were sitting outside at night in the backyard, something they had hardly ever done.  The grandmother pointed up at the bright white ball in the dark sky, and told the child, "Look, that's the moon."  The four-year-old replied," Da moon? Will it fall?"  Oh, that I could more often have such a childlike sense of wonder and discovery!  Oh, that I might be mad about the moon, that it might enable me to more intensely love this world.

~~~

Have you looked at the moon recently?  When?  What was it like?

(The quotation by Jeffrey G. Sobosan is from

Romancing the Universe, © 1999.  p. 10.)