38 Comments

This secular Jew-slash-atheist enjoyed your piece.

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That's a relief to hear, Dallman! Religion can be a very emotionally-charged topic, and I hope I conveyed my own non-judgmental view as someone who's been on both sides of the church doors.

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Faith like a phantom limb. 🖤🌕

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🙏

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Dec 27, 2023Liked by Will Dowd

“My faith prickled like a phantom limb.” Just one of the many beautiful sentences in this piece!

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Thanks Dominique!

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I am absolutely lost in your pieces. I look forward to your posts. 👌🏻

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So glad to hear that! Thank you for reading, Susan.

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Will, I enjoyed reading this and am fascinated by some of the facts you relate. When I walked out last night I saw the moon and it looked very much like the image in your post, eerily glowing in a cloudy sky. Thank you for sharing your own experience of religion and its rituals as well. Wishing you a wonderful 2024!

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Happy we can connect with words and nature. No matter where we are, we're all looking at the same Moon. Hope your 2024 shines brightly.

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Pure poetry.

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Thanks so much, Eric!

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Wow!

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Too kind. It’s easy enough if you studied Latin at secondary school - and I have the advantage of my Latin being polished every week in two Zoom sessions with another Latinophile, plus singing in the choir at St Mary of the Angels (full Latin mass, plus propers, and about 4 motets every Sunday).

Hope your amazing numerical nephew prospers!

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Exquisite.

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🙏

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Ah, writing of mystery and transcendent sacred experience. Reminds me of The Immense Journey, by Loren Eiseley. The Flow of the River. Floating in the North Platte River.

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High, high praise!

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Love this story! ♥️

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Thanks!

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Dec 27, 2023Liked by Will Dowd

Is it still named Cold Moon for people like me, who live in the Southern Hemisphere?

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Dec 28, 2023·edited Dec 28, 2023Liked by Will Dowd

I suggest Pohutukawa Moon. For Aotearoa, anyway

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Dec 28, 2023Liked by Will Dowd

Especially this year. They are absolutely stunning! Best ever!

Apparently it's a mast year.

So maybe Strawberry Moon isn't all that far off, colour-wise.

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Very cool! I'll look for some photos online.

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Will, it's a tree with masses of bright red stamen-cluster flowers at Summer Solstice. Metrosideros excelsa

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It looks almost like a coral reef. Thank you—I needed a new tree in my life.

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Even better!

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Dec 28, 2023·edited Dec 28, 2023Author

No, for you lucky folks its the Honey Moon (alternatively the Strawberry Moon or Rose Moon). I like Honey Moon, personally.

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Dec 27, 2023Liked by Will Dowd

Lovely reflection; thank you. And I'll join you on the minister bench.

"The assumption (spoken or unspoken) is that once humans become an interstellar species, we will leave religion—with its superstitions and strange ceremonies—behind on Earth." - I always wonder what impulse has, for millennia, moved the human family to create a room (of whatever size -- hut to meeting-house to basilica, and all in between) in which to meet the divine.

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Thanks for reading, Daniel. You're right, I can't think of a culture, contemporary or historical, without a designated sacred space. It must be innately human. Even in the unlikeliest places, like bustling high-tech urban hospitals, you can often find a tiny chapel—a little space for quiet reflection.

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Dec 28, 2023Liked by Will Dowd

Yes! Years ago, when I was a student worker in the large kitchen of a very large hospital, and bouncing among irregular shift hours to cover summer vacations, I would often take a quick lunchtime nap in the back corner of the minuscule chapel. It was cramped and blandly non-denominational and as far from Gothic architecture as you could get, but there was a distinct atmosphere of quiet peacefulness, almost eerily so.

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Very well described. I'm with you.

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Especially lovely this month, Will! Thank you. I was in the northern hemisphere (Montréal) for November’s full moon, and enjoyed being able to see what you saw (since the moon we see in the southern hemisphere is up the other way). But this month’s post opens things up beyond Earth in a most interesting and unexpected way.

Not sure how Jesus would get on with the continual bombardment of cosmic rays on the Martian surface. (Mortals like Elon Musk would have to live underground to survive them.) But you have given us an arresting image.

Thank you; happy Christmas! I hope your health is improving.

Anne

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Thanks so much, Anne! Yes, Mars is certainly going to give Elon a run for his money. After watching that rock crack that Tesla window on stage, I decided not to volunteer for the first mission to Mars on a Space X rocket.

Happy Christmas to you as well. Here's to health and happiness in 2024!

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This is interesting: However, in truth, the first liquid and food ever consumed on the Moon were wine and bread.

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Thanks for reading and writing this comment. I hope you have a wonderful new year as well, Lawrence. Be well!

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Your comment reads like a haiku. Thanks, Craig!

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