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This remains one of my favorite photos taken last year. It was taken last January 30 from the deck behind our home, when I’d come out to watch the sun set. The moon put on a show again last week when we enjoyed the full moon for Christmas. It was especially close and bright, filling the sky with bright light on Christmas Eve and Christmas night.
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These favorite photos of the Moon and Sun seem especially appropriate for the photo challenge this week of “Circle,” as they also rule the cycles of our planet’s sky and climate. The ‘wheel of the year’ turns continually as an ever- present rhythm in our lives.
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We’ve just passed our Winter Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, and the days have begun to grow again by a minute or so each day. We have reached, and passed, one of the main turning points of our year. Even as our days now grow longer, they will also grow colder as we climb back towards the Equinox next March. These photos were taken December 11, 2014, just days before the Winter Solstice.
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We had stopped to photograph this elegant grouping of trees, and stayed to witness the sun setting in the afternoon sky.
Circles , cycles, spheres and spirals offer comfort and companionship along our life time’s journey. Perhaps you also hold memories close of special sunrises and moon-rises, sunsets and balmy full-moon nights. Perhaps you also mark the equinoxes and solstices as we do, marking the turnings of the each passing year.
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We hold this common thread with all of our ancestors; this sky watching and marking of time. We find the circles of standing stones they left for us; their observatories of standing stones used also to measure cosmic time by the stars and planets.
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We look upon the same Sun and the same Moon as they watched. The same Sun and Moon we watched as children, and that our loved ones see no matter how far away their homes. Another circle, perhaps? These are constants in an ever-changing world.
We watch Venus trace a pentagram across the sky in her years long wandering as she shifts from the Morning Star to the Evening Star. We watch for Mighty Orion to march across the night time sky, and wonder if the stories of bright Sirius might be true….
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Circles and cycles. As Above, so Below…. These familiar lights still have much to teach us as we unravel their mysteries.
May this New Year, just beginning, bring you happiness, and wisdom too.
Finding ourselves beginning another January, we remember Janus, the one with two faces, who looks both ahead and behind. This ancient Roman God watched over arrivals and departures, beginnings and endings.
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As we look ahead, we also look behind at the path we’ve followed which brought us to this place and time.
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For the Daily Post’s