I love the moon.
I have been drawing her since I was young, and I still can’t resist photographing her whenever she catches my eye. A silver curve suspended in a morning sky. A luminous circle rising above the trees. Sometimes barely there, sometimes impossible to miss.
She seems to change before my eyes, revealing more of herself, then less. And yet, of course, the moon remains whole.
There’s something else I love about her. She reflects. The moon catches light and shares it.
Isn’t that something we can do for one another?
We never see the whole of anyone at once. We catch glimpses. Something bright appears in a conversation, a gesture, a moment of joy. When we’re paying attention, we notice, and sometimes we get to shine it back.
Maybe this is one way we honor each other.
There Is Still More To See
I’m not sure we ever see all of another person, or even all of ourselves. Different parts of us come into view at different times, under different light. A passion awakens. An old love returns in a new form. Something that has always belonged to us suddenly becomes visible.
Wholeness doesn’t mean fully revealed.
Familiarity doesn’t mean we’ve finished seeing someone. We can know a person by heart and still be curious about them.
Sometimes we catch each other in the act of being ourselves.
A certain curl of the mouth. A glint in the eye. Some little flash of delight that the person wearing it may never see.
And isn’t there pleasure in that? We don’t always have to turn what we notice into something useful. Sometimes we simply get to bask in another person’s particular light.
This week brought several birthdays and easy occasions to reflect some of that light back to people I love. But the birthdays really just made me more aware of something happening every day. We’re continually revealing ourselves to one another, often without knowing we’re doing it.
Noticing is attention deepened.
And this is another way to love: keep looking. Stay awake to what is still being revealed.
Love Like The Moon
And then we can reflect what we’ve seen.
Something we’ve noticed in another person can be held where they can see it too. A glimmer they may never have thought to notice. A part of themselves so natural they simply go about being it.
Oh, look at you.
There is something beautiful about receiving ourselves through the loving attention of another person. Someone has noticed. Something we revealed in passing was not passing to them.
That reflection might become a sentence, a note, a gesture, a gift. Or it may simply change the way we see and love someone the next time we’re together.
To honor someone is to let what we notice about them inform how we love them.
The moon has been showing me this for most of my life. Keep looking because there is always more to see, more light to catch, and more to love. Take it in. And when you can, shine some of it back.
Love like the moon.
There you are.