A Full Moon

I have a small meditation chapel in my house.  It doesn't have any light other than a skylight and candles (I'll take a picture in the day and post it later) so the night is clear and close.  Last night I stood outside the door, which has a temple bell hanging before it, thinking about all the changes that have suddenly been thrust upon me.

My mother's death certainly tops the list.  But just a few days before she died, I took a temporary job at a debt collection company to help both with some of the finances and to get my focus off caregiving for a little while.  Little did I know that the job would be taking my mind off grief for a few hours each day since I started on Monday, the one week anniversary of the funeral.

I'm not quite sure why I found and took this job...or perhaps was lead and given it.  It certainly isn't anything I've ever done or aspired to do.  However, I firmly believe, even when I am in the midst of doubting everything including my sanity and the presence of God, that all things happen in our lives for a reason.  That everything comes with a lesson attached.  Sometimes the lesson is learned in joy, sometimes in sorrow.  Sometimes in difficulty, sometimes in ease.

Lately my lessons seem to be learned more in sorrow and difficulty than in ease.  Perhaps that's because I don't pay sufficient attention to the lessons of joy and ease.  Or perhaps it is because I am sending out signals that indicate I want to learn the hard way.  After all, it says in Job that "What I always feared has happened to me. What I dreaded has come true."  It does seem that what we focus on comes to pass and certainly this past year my focus has been on hard things.

As I enter the meditation chapel on my way to bed, I look up through the skylight and see the full moon overhead, a silver bowl in a star-spangled sky.  I can see why the ancients thought the moon was a goddess, draping her soft shimmering light over the land, transforming the harshness into gentle shadow and flowing shape.

Perhaps, starting now, I can begin to learn some lessons from a place of joy, instead of pain. 

It's the prayer I send to heaven on a moonbeam during this full moon.