why the moon?
Amid tensions between god and empire, between life and money, between nature and machine, we have a choice. We can choose to ignore the natural month – the new moon – or we can choose to participate in it. To organize part of our life around it. To be alive to it.
God time versus empire time
In the wake of the French Revolution (1789), lawmakers of the French First Republic decided in 1793 that a week consisted of 10 days, not 7 days. This change was part of a new calendar, the French Republican Calendar.
“The calendar consisted of twelve 30-day months, each divided into three 10-day cycles similar to weeks ... It was designed in part to remove all religious and royalist influences from the calendar, and it was part of a larger attempt at dechristianisation and decimalisation in France …” (“French Republican calendar,” Wikipedia)
Those were heady days. Governments were revisiting time. They could deliberate and decide the best way to mark time, in the light of reason, leaving behind error and superstition. Indeed, just 40 years before the French Revolution, there were two calendar changes in England, Wales, Ireland, and Britain’s American colonies in 1752.
“The first adjusted the start of a new year from Lady Day (25 March) to 1 January (which Scotland had done from 1600), while the second discarded the Julian calendar in favour of the Gregorian calendar, removing 11 days from the September 1752 calendar to do so.” (“Gregorian Calendar,” Wikipedia)
At least the Gregorian calendar represented an advance in the precision of empire time. Not so the French calendar.
In France, the people were revolting against the old world. They wanted to banish the ancien régime and with it any trace of traditionalism. The week in the Kingdom of France, like every other country in Europe, had been 7 days as long as anyone could remember. But was it rooted in reason, the guiding principle of the French revolution? Everything and everyone was being reconsidered, including the calendar, the very organization of time. And the traditional week was a problem.
In the minds of France’s new leaders, the traditional week was connected to religion, royalty, and superstition. The Book of Genesis proclaimed that god made the world in 7 days, using the seventh day to rest. Days were named for heavenly bodies associated with deities or other religious concepts. Sunday (dimanche) was the Lord’s day, Monday (lundi) was Moon Day, Tuesday (mardi) was Mars day, and so on to Saturday (samedi) Sabbath day.
To lovers of reason, this nomenclature was a relic of paganism at best, religious superstition at worst. So they overturned tradition, threw out the old calendar, and started fresh. Sort of.
They did want to elevate nature and agriculture, but in their obsession with reason, they overshot the goal, elevating instead the thinking mind and delusion. A week does not consist of 10 days. And the French Republic calendar lasted just 12 years. The lesson? Humans cannot reinvent time; we can only rediscover it.
Yet who gets to decide how long a week is? Or a day? Or a month? Or an hour? These things are already decided. The sun, the moon, and the stars tell us exactly what time it is. However, these cosmic clocks and calendars are not completely static. In the language of science, they are eccentric. For example, the sun does not conform to the standard day as observed by most humans.
Ditto the moon. A lunation (aka synodic month) is the period of time from one new moon to the next new moon.
“... the average length of a lunation is 29.53059 days (or 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes, and 3 seconds). However, the length of any one synodic month can vary from 29.26 to 29.80 days (12.96 hours) due to the perturbing effects of the sun’s gravity on the moon’s eccentric orbit.”
Thus a week is marked by phases of the moon. Each phase averages 7.38 days, but varies ±11.25% due to lunar apogee and perigee.
Being more attuned to the cycles of the moon is no guarantee of godliness. In the book of the prophet Isaiah, G-d is unhappy with the Israelites. “I hate your new moon feasts and your holy meetings,” says G-d. “They have become like a heavy load for me. I cannot carry it any longer!” (Isaiah 1:14)
Earlier in the Torah, G-d had ordained the new moon festivals:
“Also in the day of your gladness, in your appointed feasts, and at the beginning of your months, you shall blow the trumpets over your burnt offerings and over the sacrifice of your peace offerings; and they shall be a memorial for you before your God: I am the Lord your God.” (Numbers 10:10)
What was the problem? Their hearts were not in it. They were not loving G-d on the new moon. They were just going through the motions: “When will new moon be past, that we may sell grain? And the Sabbath, that we may trade wheat? ... We can fix the scales and cheat the people.” (Amos 8:5)
This tension persists today. Do we follow empire’s calendar and time? Or do we follow god’s time? I credit my wife’s grandmother, Amparo Martínez Martínez (1910-2014), for being the first person to synthesize this vital difference for me in a succinct way. She used to question daylight savings time, asking, “Hora de dios, u hora del hombre?” (God’s time or human time?)
Amid this ancient and modern tension between god and empire, between life and money, between nature and machine, we have a choice. We can choose to ignore the natural month – the new moon – or we can choose to participate in it. To organize part of our life around it. To be alive to it.
For those reasons, I choose to take a break from talking in sync with the new moon. It’s a small act of loving god, of loving nature, and of loving life. But as the prophets say, the difference between good and evil depends on many small acts. May we choose wisely every day, always remembering god’s time in the midst of our day.
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