Moon-like

This morning I find myself disposed to a short survey of the moon, the one heavenly body which besides moving also changes, in classic literature.  Happens to everyone, I know.

In Dante's vision of heaven, the circle of the moon is reserved for the blessed who, while in this life, were inconstant in their vows.  In short, they were changeable like the moon.  The moon here is a symbol or picture of that which grows and fades, sometimes repeatedly.  As an aside, this picture of Dante's is a firm reminder to us that blessedness, or salvation - to use a more evangelically Protestant vocabulary - is dependent not on our moral perfection but on something else.  The blessed in heaven were in life like us, imperfect.

The moon's chageable nature is famously reflected also in the Bard's work.  Juliet beseeches Romeo in the play bearing their names:

O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon,
That monthly changes in her circled orb,
Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.
(Act II, scene ii)

Again this orb is invoked as a picture of mutability.

A third, less well-known example from an anonymous 14th century poet whom I encountered in The New Oxford Book of Christian Verse.

Moon-like is all other love
First crescent, then decreasing, gain
Flower that buds, and soon goes off
A day that fleets away in rain

All other love bravely starts out,
But ends with torture, and in tears;
No love can salve the torment out
But that the King of heaven bears.

When I read the first lines of this poem I assumed that is was about us loving other things more that we love Jesus - about our idolatries and how they are insubstantial and unenduring compared to our true love of God.  This is a typical modern or post-modern response - it's all about me.

But as one reads the whole poem (it is short, only seven stanzas), one realizes that the author's point is that other loves (mine) are being compared to God's love, not mine for him.  Here the author understands something that Dante did as well.  Something that we understand theologically or in theory, but sometimes lose in practice - that we are saved not by our commitment and constancy but by his.

I remember thinking and feeling in the early flush of conversion that this love and devotion to Jesus will never fade - that it will carry me through.  But, alas, moon-like is all other love.  I have good days and bad days.  Fervent ones and indifferent ones.  My loves wax and wane.  In the end this is a warning against an idolatry - the idolatry of self which thinks that my commitment, actions or fervor is sufficient.  None of them are.

It is good to be reminded by Dante and this medieval poet that I am saved not by my love for or commitment to him, but by his for and to me.  I am relieved, in fact.  For my loves change - run hot and cold.  His does not.  As our anonymous friend says:

For ever springing, ever new,
For ever the full orb it is
A thing not thinned, from which accrue
Always new sweets, new centuries.
(emphasis mine)