Keeping Aldebaran in Mind
By Dana Gerhardt

Imagine you did not learn the months of the year in kindergarten.  Imagine instead your mother and father watched the sky, waiting for the morning star Aldebaran to rise, and when it did, you knew you would finally get your bicycle.  One lunar month later, when the morning star Rigel made its first appearance of the year, your mother would gather those sweet berries and bake them into a pie.  High summer, you stayed up late, watching the moon grow bigger, brightening all the rooftops in your neighborhood.  You grew sad as she slimmed back to a morning crescent, knowing Sirius would soon appear, and school would begin again.

All grown up, you watch the skies now as your parents did, waiting each year for Aldebaran, loving how it ushers in an abundance of watermelon and strawberries at the grocery store.  You keep an eye on the moon moving through her cycle and make a promise to yourself.  Fasting on watermelon juice for the three days of the dark moon, you’re flush with new energy when Rigel appears.  Of course you wouldn’t think of going a single day or night without looking skyward. 

Imagine:  friendlier than the clock, more familiar than the local weatherman, more dear than your new DVD player:  the stars.  Honoring your life as you honor them.  In your house and every other house in your neighborhood, there’s a row of eastern-facing windows.  And in the furthest one, in your son’s bedroom, Sirius will appear one late-summer morning, announcing it’s time to shop for a new lunch box and new-school-year clothes. 

Of course, in real life, we don’t need to look up.  I think of explaining this to an ancestor, one who visited the natural calendar as regularly as I do television and the local gas station.  “Oh ancestor, I need neither the seasons nor the moon.  I do not change my work nor vary my meals with the sun.  I travel in one day by car as far as you traveled in three moons by foot.  I have a house big enough to shelter a small village, though there are only three of us.  And we are as warm in winter as our energy bill is high.” 
“No sun, no moon, no stars?”  There is a look of confusion on my ancestor’s face, a sea of thoughts that churn until out comes a single question:  “But then, who do you pray to?” 

The old ones were efficient.  They followed the stars, nature’s supply of food, the whispered messages of gods.  They could embrace three virtues in a single gesture, binding together what’s natural, practical, and mystical.  We travel down a faster, smoother road, steadying ourselves with sensible measures.  We’re intrigued by nature and spirituality, but often too busy to weave them in.  They’re nonessential.  Separate from our daily life.  Is it any wonder then, why our TV sets broadcast so much emptiness, rage and sorrow? 

We can’t (and shouldn’t) recreate our ancestors’ lives.  But we still have the very same cycling moon that meant so much to them.  What, with our modern conveniences, our creativity, our spiritual needs, can we bring to it?  Perhaps each of us, in our own way, can discover one new gesture this lunar month to weave spirit, earth, and practical life together again.  Write me (or tell a loved one) how you did it.