Crow and Flame

I want to talk about the moon.

Not because it is bright, but because it isn’t.

The moon has no light of its own. It simply catches what the sun offers and returns it to the world more gently. It softens what would otherwise blind us. It reminds us that there is strength in reflection, that borrowed light is still light.

I want to talk about the tides and how the moon reaches across impossible distances, tugging at entire oceans without ever laying a hand upon them. Invisible forces are often the strongest ones. We cannot see gravity pulling the sea, but every shoreline knows it is there.

Perhaps we are like that too. Perhaps we are also pulled by things that we cannot always name. Things like love…grief. Hope.
Memory.

The moon teaches us that distance does not lessen influence. Then, there is the night itself.

People speak of darkness as though it is something to fear, but I have always wondered if darkness is simply the world’s way of tucking us in.

It falls over the earth like a blanket, not to smother us, but to give us permission to rest. It quiets the sharp edges of the day. It hushes the noise long enough for us to hear our own hearts again.

In daylight, everything asks something of us. The daylight brings expectations to be productive, to be successful, to be enough. The night asks only that we be still.

It is only in darkness that the stars reveal themselves. No star competes with the sun. It waits patiently until the sky grows dark enough for its light to matter. Perhaps that is why I find so much comfort in them. They remind me that some kinds of beauty can only exist because of the darkness surrounding them.

We spend so much of our lives trying to outrun our nights. I wonder, if maybe we were never meant to.

Maybe the night is not the opposite of life, but part of its rhythm.

The moon waxes and wanes.
The tides rise and fall.
The stars appear and disappear with the turning of the earth.

Nothing in nature is ashamed of its cycles.

Only we are.

Perhaps there is wisdom in looking up.

The moon does not apologize for being only a crescent.
The stars do not complain that they are seen only after sunset.
The darkness does not apologize for arriving each evening.

They simply become what they were always meant to be.

And maybe we can too.

Maybe healing is less about becoming the sun—brilliant and relentless—and more about becoming the moon.

Learning to hold the light gently.

Learning to trust the tides.

Learning to believe that even when darkness falls around us like a blanket, there are still countless stars waiting for someone to look up.