Still One Sun and One Moon

The poem by Amanda Gorman that she read during the presidential inauguration in January of 2021 evoked my memories of other inauguration poets.  The following thoughts -- which I wrote five-and-a-half years ago -- still seem relevant. Perhaps poets' reflections are of more lasting value than much of  today's tweets.

~ ~ ~

The reading of a poem by a designated poet has now become a regular part of U.S. presidential inauguration ceremonies. The first reading was at the inauguration of JFK in 1961.  The already well-known and highly esteemed poet Robert Frost brought a copy of his new poem "Dedication" to read.  No inaugural poet has had to face the elements and imperfect technology the way Frost did.  I remember watching on TV. Frost stood at a podium where an electrical fire had been put out; a bitterly cold wind rattled the sheets of paper he held; and the intense sun blinded his eyes.  The sun won out.  And so, unable to read further, Frost finished by reciting from memory an older poem, "The Gift Outright."

Over the past decade or so, inaugural poets have been less known, but that has not meant that their poems, usually written for the occasion, have been forgotten.  I remember in particular there having been quite of bit of favorable comment about the poem "One Today" read by Richard Blanco at the Obama inauguration in 2013.  The comments about the poem afterwards on radio and TV showed how it had been especially accessible and meaningful to many.  In his poem, Blanco employed the opening image of "one sun" rising in the eastern U.S. and moving across the continent to depict and tie together the varied lives of people as they awoke and arose to their day's regular activities.  Occasionally, a specific detail added depth to the more general descriptions:

"My face, your face, millions of faces in morning's mirrors,

...on our way to clean tables, read ledgers, or save lives --

to teach geometry, or ring-up groceries as my mother did...."

The poem continued the theme of unity by using the phrases "one sky" and "one moon."

That modern poem came back to my mind when I recently read, of all things, an 8th-century Buddhist stanza.  It was by Yung-chia Ta-shih, and goes like this:

"One Nature, perfect and pervading, circulates in all natures,

One Reality, all comprehensive, contains within itself all realities.

The one Moon reflects itself whenever there is a sheet of water,

And all the moons in the waters are embraced within the one Moon."

Even when I was in early elementary school, and read introductory books about astronomy, scientists knew that the planets of our own solar system varied in whether they had one moon, no moon, or more than one.  Astronomers' inventory of our universe is now so vast that we have numerous examples of the variety of moons that orbit about each planet in many planetary systems.  We also now know that other planetary systems sometimes have not a single star but a star system at their center.

If our own solar system did have more than one sun, or if our Earth had more than one moon, I would hope we would still have poets to remind us that we are all ultimately one people.  And also have poets to at times stretch our minds a little farther, by reminding us that all Life on this planet is ultimately One Life.

~~~

Is there some way you try to come back to an awareness of our unity amidst differences?

(The Japanese print is in the public domain because its copyright has expired.)

(The Buddhist verse is taken from The Perennial Philosophy by Aldous Huxley, © 1945, p. 8.)
(The 2013 poem "One Today" by Richard Blanco can be read at this external link:  "One Today".)

The Moving Moon

Even though it was a fairly detailed book on science and scientists during the Middle Ages, one paragraph took me back to something delightful I had experienced as a child.  The historian James Hannam writes:

"Children are often convinced that the moon is following them
 when they are travelling by car.  This is because, however far the car moves,
 the direction and size of the moon do not change at all.
 In comparison, all nearby everyday objects move across our field of vision
 as we approach and then pass them."

I remember that marvelous experience of watching the moon travel alongside us as I rode in the back seat of my parents' car.  (Although I did not tell them about it because it was such a wonderful secret!)

Even when I did not view that moving moon out of the side-window of a traveling car, I was sometimes moved by the moon's luminescence.  What a unique light it gave off, especially when full -- often a white light without being cold or piercing.  Like that light, our Earth's moon is one of a kind among our natural experiences here on Earth.

tides on an island

The moon affects us in other ways.  The moon's gravitational pull is the main cause of the movement of tides on shores.  Even ancient people noticed the harmony between the moon's returning to the sky and the height of tides.  But in the 17th century, when Galileo was trying to find proof that the Earth moved, he came up with the notion that the Earth's movements might instead be their cause.  The astronomer Johannes Kepler suggested to Galileo that the moon was indeed what caused tides, but Galileo dismissed the idea of an invisible force at a distance, and would not be budged from his own incorrect tide-theory.  Galileo even included in his famous book Dialogue his notion that the Earth's movement sloshed the tides about, even though other scientists pointed out that his hypothesis would result in only a single daily tide at spring, whereas two spring tides had been observed.

The moon is almost an inflection of the verb "to move":  The moon moves in its orbit, it is continuously moving the tides, and our hearts have been moved by it.

In this age of astronauts, we have reached the moon, but has the sight of the rising moon reached us?  The astronauts found the moon to be dry, gray, and dusty.  From here on Earth, it is beautiful and luminescent -- white, golden, or orange.

Even in our modern cities, in which light-pollution renders most stars invisible, we can often see the moon if we just look up.  With the constant barrage of news and advertising we are subjected to in our modern, technological societies, the days can go by in a blur of information and disinformation.  Perhaps we should pause some early mornings or evenings, look up at the moon, and be calmed by a recollection of its constancy, even with its changing faces.

~~~

Can you think of anything that -- like the moon -- remains constant even as it assumes different phases or forms?

(The quotation by Hannam is from The Genesis of Science:
How the Christian Middle Ages Launched the Scientific Revolution, © 2011, p. 274.)

(The first photo is by SeanMcClean; the second by さかおり. Both used under Creative Commons
 Attribution-Share- Alike licenses.)

One Sun and One Moon

The reading of a poem by a designated poet has now become a regular part of U.S. presidential inauguration ceremonies. The first reading was at the inauguration of JFK in 1961.  The already well-known and highly esteemed poet Robert Frost brought a copy of his new poem "Dedication" to read.  No inaugural poet has had to face the elements and imperfect technology the way Frost did.  I remember watching on TV. Frost stood at a podium where an electrical fire had been put out; a bitterly cold wind rattled the sheets of paper he held; and the intense sun blinded his eyes.  The sun won out.  And so, unable to read further, Frost finished by reciting from memory an older poem, "The Gift Outright."

Over the past decade or so, inaugural poets have been less known, but that has not meant that their poems, usually written for the occasion, have been forgotten.  I remember in particular there having been quite of bit of favorable comment about the poem "One Today" read by Richard Blanco at the Obama inauguration in 2013.  The comments about the poem afterwards on radio and TV showed how it had been especially accessible and meaningful to many.  In his poem, Blanco employed the opening image of "one sun" rising in the eastern U.S. and moving across the continent to depict and tie together the varied lives of people as they awoke and arose to their day's regular activities.  Occasionally, a specific detail added depth to the more general descriptions:

"My face, your face, millions of faces in morning's mirrors,

...on our way to clean tables, read ledgers, or save lives --

to teach geometry, or ring-up groceries as my mother did...."

The poem continued the theme of unity by using the phrases "one sky" and "one moon."

That modern poem came back to my mind when I recently read, of all things, an 8th-century Buddhist stanza.  It was by Yung-chia Ta-shih, and goes like this:

"One Nature, perfect and pervading, circulates in all natures,

One Reality, all comprehensive, contains within itself all realities.

The one Moon reflects itself whenever there is a sheet of water,

And all the moons in the waters are embraced within the one Moon."

Even when I was in early elementary school, and read introductory books about astronomy, scientists knew that the planets of our own solar system varied in whether they had one moon, no moon, or more than one.  Astronomers' inventory of our universe is now so vast that we have numerous examples of the variety of moons that orbit about each planet in many planetary systems.  We also now know that other planetary systems sometimes have not a single star but a star system at their center.

If our own solar system did have more than one sun, or if our Earth had more than one moon, I would hope we would still have poets to remind us that we are all ultimately one people.  And also have poets to at times stretch our minds a little farther, by reminding us that all Life on this planet is ultimately One Life.

~~~

Is there some way you try to come back to an awareness of our unity amidst differences?

(The Japanese print is in the public domain because its copyright has expired.)

(The Buddhist verse is taken from The Perennial Philosophy by Aldous Huxley, © 1945, p. 8.)
(The 2013 poem "One Today" by Richard Blanco can be read at this external link:  "One Today".)

The Moon Over the Gate

Fluorescent lights.  Halogens.  Energy-efficient LED's.  Even incandescent bulbs.  When I go to the hardware store to purchase some light bulbs, I'm offered a mind-numbing selection.  What kind of coloration do I want?  If I can figure it out, I have myriad choices, ranging from icy white to imitations of sunlight to traditional warmth.

"The Harvest Moon"

Despite all that variety, there is one type of light that people in cities rarely experience today.  It is what a love song in the early 1900's called "the light of the silvery moon."  All the artificial lights of our cities, although making life safer in some ways, prevent us from enjoying full moonlight. That is unfortunate because moonlight is a form of illumination that people have considered to be a nearly transcendent experience.

I did once experience totally undiluted moonlight.  It was when my wife and I went to one of the star-gazing "parties" held at the isolated McDonald Observatory in remote west Texas.  Our ability to observe stars through the two small telescopes set up for the public was impeded by there being a brilliant full moon.  What interested me more than the stars was walking about outdoors using the illumination of nothing but the moonlight.  And how strange that light was!  I can only describe it by saying it was as white in coloration as a halogen, while at the same time being as soft as still air.

Given the uniqueness of that light, it is no wonder that writers down through history have seen moonlight as an aid to coming to a transcendent awareness.  Frequently, it is depicted as a transcendence that returns us to a state of feeling being loved in a way we forgot about.  For example, take this poem by the 8th-century Chinese Li Po:

"So bright a gleam on the foot of my bed --

Could there have been a frost already?

Lifting myself to look, I found that it was moonlight.

Sinking back again, I thought suddenly of home."

The moonlight is so strange that Li Po does not recognize it at first, mistaking it for frost.  And yet, it brings him back to a place expressive of being loved -- "home."

Experiencing moonlight thus becomes a passage into a kind of transcendence.  Such movements into transcendence are sometimes expressed by poets' using some symbol for an opening. Thus, it might be a symbol such as a window, through which the moonlight enters, and through which the poet's heart can be transported out beyond its ordinary limits.

Another symbol for opening -- a gate -- is employed by the 8th-century Zen Buddhist writer Yung-Chia Ta-Shih. In his poem, he suggests that the greater consciousness the soft moon brings can not only make us feel more loved, but also make us be more loving.  Some key lines from his poem have been translated in this way:

"One moon is reflected in every expanse of water.

Every reflected moon is the one moon....

The great gate of love is wide open."

~~~

Have you ever experienced how brilliant soft moonlight can be?  Where was that?

(The Li Po poem is from The Jade Mountain, by Witter Bynner and Kiang Kang-Hu, translators, © 1929.)

(The excerpt from the Yung-Chia poem is taken from Blue Mountain:
 A Spiritual Anthology Celebrating the Earth, ed. F. Lynne Bachleda, © 2000. p. 88.)

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.)