Standing in the sunroom this morning, after I let the puppy out, my wife said, "Wow look at the moon." I took my eyes off the pooping dog and looked west. There, I saw the blank white moon hovering over the mountains against a red sky.
The round, featureless disk, magnified by the thick atmosphere at the horizon, appeared to me like the Host held aloft—the setting moon a Christ cracker hung in the sky.
I'm reminded of the climax of every Flannery O'Connor story ever, basically. Except I wasn't slayed where I stood by God's grace. The dog had finished pooping and I probably looked at my phone until she asked to come in.
This divine image, the transcendent moon, juxtaposed with the carnal bodily fact of a pooping dog is instructive of the way these moments visit us. God appears not adorned in majesty but cloaked in the subtle mystery of our own lives. Every moment is pregnant with such possibility for mystic encounter. It must be so. But sometimes it takes a dog and the moon to bore a hole through our skull large enough to let just a little bit of light in.