A CRESCENT MOON

This morning, while sitting out on the deck looking up at the stars, out of the corner of my eye I suddenly saw this incredibly bright hook sitting just over the top of Enlightenment Mountain. Enlightenment Mountain is the name given for a singular peak, rounded at the top, which sits just above the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas about a mile away from me.

The "hook" revealed itself to be the top of a crescent moon. The Earth continued to turn as I watched the moon. The Earth’s black edge appeared to slide down the side of the bright yellow object until the crescent was fully revealed. As this was happening, it seemed as if the Earth was leaning down to let me see the object that had appeared to be a hook.

I had a thought, that if I was a primitive man and didn’t know that the moon was the moon and that the Earth turned on an axis, I would’ve been completely blown away by what I was looking at. As powerful as the sight was appearing against the black sky, as I watched at 5:00 AM alone in the silence, my intellect had to "tell" me all about it.

What I wished for instead, was to be innocent enough to just enjoy the sight of a "hook" coming up over the top of the mountain—and not to know anything more about it. It was that first sight of it that was the revelation—so pure, so clean, so free of other thoughts.

A bright yellow hook comes into the sky. That’s what it was. I’ll leave it at that.