A homily for the Full Moon on February 12, 2025.
Dearly Beloved,
Blessed Full Moon, dear siblings.
Things are not okay. I’m not going to pretend they are. I wish to always be honest with you all, my dear ones. I wish to always lead with my vulnerability. So I wish to tell you that I am not okay. I am scared. I am angry. I am worried for myself and others. I am sleeping poorly and when I can sleep, I am plagued by dreams of pain and terror (more so than usual).
And yet…I am not alone.
You are not alone.
We are not alone.
In my anxiety, I turn again and again to the dubious comforts of social media and instead of the fractured mass of terrified people turning on each other that decades of indoctrination have taught me to expect, I see people coming together. Checking on each other. Reaching out for each other. I see the communities around me pulling together, sharing resources, and creating networks of mutual care, mutual protection, and mutual support.
I see hope, love, and courage coming from the least likely places, from the people who are the most vulnerable, who have the least to spare, and who have the most to lose.
I see faith. A faith that despite the ordeals which are with us and ahead of us, the Divine is still with us, every moment, always right there with us, always ready to be in relationship with us, always ready to talk to us, always ready to listen. The gods, as always, are here, present and available through the worlds above, below, and right here in the middle.
And most of all, tonight I see the Moon. The Moon that is always there, always pulling us up and out into the silver light She sheds upon the world. Her face changes from light to dark and back again, but She is our constant companion, pulling the tides within us and showing us the hidden faces we carry within.
So, dear siblings, I do not ask that we ignore or deny our fear or anger tonight or in the coming days. Instead I say let us look to our left and our right, to above and below, to the people we love and the spirits and deities we honor. I ask that we reach out to the Divine as the Divine reaches out to us. Let us connect. Let us be in relationship, with each other and the Divine, with our gods and our spirits, with our ancestors and our friends, and honor those relationships.
Blessed Full Moon, dear siblings.
In love,
Soror Alice
Art: Woodcut illustration from Pliny’s “Naturalis Historia”, (1582)