Can We Defund the Weather? Fullness and Emptiness Before the New Year

The news cycle has been drenched in the stories of Hurricane Idalia—first landing in Florida—and though its impact was somewhat less than feared, the extent of the devastation to the tourism communities boasting cottages with spectacular sunsets, like Cedar Grove situated right on the Gulf of Mexico, as well as the small fishing communities dotting Florida's Gulf Coast—has yet to be determined. Then we learned more of her unusually warm-water-fueled geo temper tantrum, watching in horror as it released so much pent-up unresolved traumas onto the innocent punching bags of coastal Georgia and the Carolinas, till it finally managed to take some deep breaths, and de-escalate—into a mere tropical storm.

Can we defund the weather?

Alas, the news cycle marches on, in some ways, not unlike the seemingly detached, dispassionate self-absorption of the storm itself, in all its oblivion to the carnage left in its wake—winding it all down with this key takeaway from Hurricane IDALIA: "Looks like it's shaping up to be a doozy of a winter" —now back to the real stories: Who got indicted for what, and the mug shots, we can't not dwell on that. Ukraine is finally "breaking through the vaunted Russian defense line," but they need more from America and it's not forthcoming in a timely way—and now both political parties are neck and neck in determining who is fielding the most cognitively impaired aging octogenarian. Who will win that title and lift that belt on the beltway? Who knows. May G-d bless them both with better health and renewed vigor.

Lost in all that, and I read a newspaper every day, and simply didn't see it reported on any front-page headline—was a "once in a Blue Moon" story—about a Blue Moon. It was Rabbi Avremi Raichik, my colleague and friend, and team leader, alongside his amazing, energetic wife Rivky, for Chabad of the North Shore in Cape Ann—who broke the story for me in a phone conversation late last night.

As we were talking, I walked outside. And there it was. A moon so bright and distinct, unlike anything I've ever seen before! I ended up staying up through the night, and left for the airport to catch a flight to Atlanta. The very full not really blue "Blue Moon" followed us all the way to Logan, laughing in the sky, like a guest who has misplaced his watch and is beginning to overstay his welcome.

A second full moon in one month. So much to think about, especially for us lunar calendar folks.

Could this Blue Moon, emerging in its splendid luminescence immediately after the storm, as if in answer to all the lingering questions posed by the turbulence of ALL the storms raging "out there" —alongside the parallel existential ones raging "in here" —on the individual level and in the collective consciousness of a society— one mired in the raging winds of an unprecedented degree of uncertainty, all boiling in the record-setting hot temperatures seething on the surface of society itself, building strength, category three, four, and even five— Could this Blue Moon be OUR Rainbow, our very own sign, a cosmic negation of these most potent storms, and promise of "lighter" times ahead?

I'll take it!

Can this moment be registered as a universal follow-up to India's first-ever landing on the moon's South Pole? Only this time, the Moon is landing on us?

What are we to make of this rare infusion of supplementary light, this gift of recurring fullness compressed and doubly concentrated in the same period of time, as if stretching the boundaries of time itself to accommodate this largess? What am I to make of the state of my own mindfulness, in the face of the magnitude of energy that almost slipped through my fingers?

So much fullness alongside so much emptiness.

This points me in a new direction, and offers a magnificently timed framework of potent symbols with which I can begin to approach my own personal Teshuva process this year. I hope it offers some insightful food for thought for you as well.