This is How I Draw the Moon

My friend Israel suggested a few weeks ago that I go outside and talk with the moon. We were discussing religion and I was telling him about my dilemma with who or what or where I cast my prayer. His name is Israel because his parents were Jesus hippies when he was born. They've gone from serious Jesus hippies to serious consumers but I think all their passion for faith permeated the amniotic sac, and his consciousness, because he spends a great deal of time, himself, on matters of faith and religion.

I've known him now for more than ten years. He's the only person who has been able to successfully walk me into meditation. We used to have wonderful sleepovers at his River Street apartment and stay up all night talking about boys and the Goddess, candles burning on his windowsill and Dead Can Dance chanting from the speakers. He's since become a member of the Catholic church (because he loves Mary so very much) but he gave that up shortly after the confirmation (what exactly do they call that in Catholicism?), because it became ever clear to him that there isn't much room in the Catholic religion for gay men. After that he started going to synagogue. He liked the generic god-ness of synagogue, but again, no good woman to worship there. I'm not sure exactly where he's at now. I've gotten some very beautiful Buddist art post-cards in the past few weeks but I think through it all, he just loves Wicca. I don't know.

But I haven't actually gone out and talked with the moon yet, although, I've thought a great deal about it. It's full today and I'm thinking it's a pretty good time. Two nights ago, I crawled into bed and she was right above my head through the four paned window. Almost full but not quite. I kept my eyes on her and started thinking of her as god. How sometimes she's present and sometimes she's not. She's sometimes waxing. Sometimes waning. Sometimes just under cloud cover. But her presence is constant even if we can't always see by her light. That's how alot of people view god, yes?

When my daughter was four years old and she and I were living in a big wooden house at the end of a long dirt road, we used to take off all our clothes in the winter time, pull on our big, clunky snow boots and run outside on the deck and dance naked under the moon. We'd shake our bodies for about twenty seconds, run inside to stand by the woodstove for about a minute and then repeat the process over and over again until the tea pot whistled. We haven't done it in years, maybe because we moved back in with dad, but it seems like the kind of thing that should remain. Pick it back up now while she's still young enough to get a kick out of dancing naked under the moon with her mom.

Maybe while I'm out there, I'll pray. Or maybe after we drink our tea and she goes to sleep, I'll head back out there, wound up in my wool cape and sit on the hill behind the house and just throw myself at the moon, soul and all, and wait for the sound of god's breath on the wind.