Moon viewing

Right now we’re in the middle of the lunar Hebrew month. Months start with new moons, so being in the middle means a full moon. Tonight when I stepped outside of around 8:00, the moon was luminescing huge in the sky, framed by veil-thin clouds.

Chanoyu is deeply entrenched in seasonality. Chanoyu draws its practitioners into the present through careful attention to what is in bloom, what is starting to change, and which flavors are in season.

On a night like this, suddenly warm after the long winter, an evening tea might emphasize the soft breezes that are suddenly and unexpectedly welcome, after months of freezing winds. The poetry on the wall might relate obliquely to the first stirrings of spring.

But the moon, the moon tonight! The round, whole moon! I don’t know much about moon-viewing in chanoyu. Chances are that the moon is associated with summer, since a full moon reflected on still water seems like a cooling feeling. I don’t know, and my books are in boxes right now. However, I’m sure one can only go so far with moon appreciation in chanoyu; after all, the moon is around in every season, and it belongs to all of them.

Thanks to the lunar calendar, moonlight is connected in one way or another to most every Jewish holiday. I once heard the following conversation just outside the synagogue on the first night of Rosh Hashanah, the New Year:

Toddler: Look! I see the moon!
Dad: No you don’t. I can guarantee that you can’t see the moon tonight.

Because Rosh Hashanah is on the first of the month, the dad knew that there was no moonlight outside of the building that night. Half a month later came the holiday of Sukkot, a harvest festival that is celebrated outside. Sukkot begins at a time of month when a full moon rises high over the dispersed roofing of the temporary sukkot dwellings. It’s a perfect occasion to have the moon light the way.

One thing that I appreciate about the Hebrew calendar is that it encourages one to stay aware of the moon’s phases. If we’re in the early part of the month and I see a crescent moon, I know that it’s waxing. Before I stepped outside tonight, I already knew that we were in the middle of the month—and so I already knew, on an intellectual level, that the moon was going to be full.

Still, there’s no substitute for the actual experience of stepping outside into the warm spring air and being startled by the creamy bright beams in the cloud-scattered dark.