My daughter and I were having a conversation about solar and lunar calendars. Yes, I know. It’s an odd topic for conversation. But don’t most of our best conversations have their odd elements and strange beginnings?
As we texted back and forth (and yes, you can have a conversation via text message), the conversation veered toward the attention we pay the moon now as opposed to the attention paid to it in the ancient world. I realized weeks will go by during which I have no recollection of seeing the moon, much less giving it any real attention. I know this because the moon has been especially full and large this past week and I noticed it twice, thinking to myself, “Wow. The moon is huge tonight.” But I can’t recall paying any attention at all during the weeks leading up to this week.
This is in high contrast to the ancient world.
The lack of electric lights at night left the sky unpolluted by the vast amounts of artificial light we pump into the heavens. Because of that, they could see stars so much more clearly than we can in our urban settings. When I spend summers on Whidbey Island, the unceasing glow of Seattle reveals which direction it lies. And when I drove past a blackout-darkened Walmart recently, it felt eery with its lack of illumination. The ancient world had none of that.
Instead of shopping centers and office building lights, they saw stars and the moon.
The moon dominated the heavens. Its waxing and waning marked the first calendars, intriguing imaginations and leading to all kinds of speculating. What is the moon? Who is the moon? Where does it go when it disappears? What does it mean when it shines during the day? What is its relationship with the sun? Why can we look at the moon and not at the sun? And so on.
Not only could they see the heavenly expanse, but they had time to see it. The end of the sunlit day meant the end of work. They lacked both the electric lights and the caffeine to fuel the ceaseless industry you and I engage in. On top of that, they lacked all media. Not only did they lack our enslavement to our smartphones, the lack of computers, podcasts, video games, radios, texts, social media, TVs, recorded music, magazines, newspapers, letters, and books of any kind left their minds clear of the incessant and insistent input we are bombarded with.
Yes, they were physically exhausted from hard labor. But their minds were their own — all the time.
This emptiness of mind allowed them to pay attention to things we don’t and can’t pay attention to. There was far less competition for that attention. While they worked, their bodies toiled, fully engaged, but their minds were their own. An enslaved body does not mean an enslaved mind. Ours is a reversed enslavement.
Getting back to the moon, I’d guess I pay only 1% of the attention to it that people in a preindustrial world have paid to it. Where I may sit around the light of a TV screen and watch a story being shown to me, they would have sat around the light of a fire and listened to a story being told to them. Where I am under my shingled roof, they were under a roof of moon and stars and sky when weather allowed.
Now, here’s the kicker for me; something that came out in the conversation with my daughter:
If I pay attention to the moon only 1% of the amount paid by the ancient world, is it possible I pay attention to God at a similar percentage?
That haunts me.
I am so self-obsessed and so glutted on input from all these modern sources, I have so little mind space left for God. I have my pauses to pray and hear the Scriptures. But more often than not, I plunk in my AirPods and listen to the latest audiobook that has my attention instead.
I find I have to work hard to push against myself, to slow down my consumption of candy media.
There is a sweetness to time spent attentively with God, but it’s far more subtle and nuanced than the sugary media offered free and plentifully in front of me all the time.
I think something like paying attention to the moon can become a trigger to pay attention to God. The penitential seasons of Lent and Advent are helpful with their focused disciplines of fasting in order to trigger prayer and awareness of God. But I need something like the daily changes of the moon to help me pay attention to God in my daily life.