"I see the moon...."

"I see the moon
And the moon sees me
The moon sees somebody
I want to see
God bless the moon
And God bless me
And God bless the somebody
I want to see…"

My friend Maria reminded me of this lullaby the other day, and I can't seem to stop myself from singing it through my chores and into the middle of the night.  It has helped…a bit.  It has made the earth with it's wide oceans, far-off lands, and distant shores…seem somehow smaller and more circum-navigate-able. 

"…It seems to me
That God above
Created you
For me to love
He picked you out
Of all the rest
Because He knew
I'd love you the best…"

When our daughter was very little…I mean very, very little…even before she was born, I would sit in the rocking chair, looking out at the lake just beyond my window and sing this song to her.  I would imagine her from where I was on the shores of the Atlantic, and her nearly 8,000 miles away in South Africa, the moon reflecting as brilliantly on her face, as it was on the dark, still surface of Long Pond outside my window.  I was always astonished at how present it seemed.  It was almost as if the moon were actually floating on the water, instead of 238,855 miles away in orbit around the earth.  There was something so comforting about knowing that from where I sat in my little cottage near shore, I could easily see the moon, whose light was capable of touching both of us. 

I was thinking about this last night as I lay in the dark praying for our children.  Just as the moon is not the source of the light I see reflected off it's surface, I am not the source of the love that has nourished and tenderly cared for our children.  Just as the sun is the source of the moon's light, so is God the source of all the love that our children have experienced through our loving of them. 

The light that I saw reflected on the surface of the lake, was actually only the moon's reflection on the water, of the sun's reflection on the moon's surface.  All that lovely light was just on a never-ending journey of bouncing around touching everything in sight. And it's illumination was not diminished.  It shone just as brightly on the water's surface, as when I looked up at it from where I sat in my rocking chair in the dark.   It wasn't diminished by distance, or by how many surfaces it had bounced off of along the way…it still had enough light to send a path of incandescence along the surface of the water like a yellow brick road to the shoreline at my window's ledge.

Last night it struck me that even though our is in South Africa, every bit of love that I reflect in caring for her sisters…who were sleeping soundly beneath their quilts in their bedroom under the eaves...was reaching her.  It was like the moon's light.  My love doesn't have its source in me.  It originates in God and I am just one reflection in it's undiminished bouncing of light and affection as it finds its way to her heart. 

I could trust that as long as I was "shining" the light would reach her and would be just as brilliant when it arrived in her room, as it is when I tuck her sister's into their beds and sing them lullabies…my breath brushing the hairs at the nape of their necks with every verse…my fingers laced in theirs under the covers.

I could trust that my daughter could feel that same love last night…just as present as the moon's light felt on the surface of Long Pond from my rocker by the window on those nights, almost twenty years ago, when I sang to her from 10,000 miles away even before I had held her…in her bed near the Cape of Good Hope, under a Southern Cross sky.  

Love reflected knows no distance…it just bounces, and like a red rubber ball, picks up momentum and force with each surface it touches along the way…

"…I see the moon
And the moon sees me
God bless the moon
And God bless me
There's grace in the cabin
And grace in the hall
And the grace of God
Is over us all"
-     traditional folk lullaby
-     additional lyrics by Jean Ritchie