A New Moon Reflection

and an exciting deal!

Blow the horn on the new moon,
at the full moon, for our day of celebration!
Because this is the law for Israel; this is a rule of Jacob’s God.
—Psalm 81:3–4

Photo by Vladislav Klapin on Unsplash

I lie still as a board on the table while the acupuncturist pierces my skin with needles. I don’t look down once during the entire hour they poke out of me like porcupine quills. I try to focus solely on the controlled rise and fall of my chest so as to prevent my mind from spiraling and my body from dashing out the door in a moment of weakness with needles still dangling from my skin.

Despite my aversion to needles, I decided to try a session of acupuncture out of pure desperation. I was full-term in my pregnancy and had been experiencing debilitating back pain since the first trimester. By the time I reached my due date, I could barely walk, get out of bed, or turn over in my sleep. I was willing to try anything.

“When are you due?” she asked as she pulled a needle out of my skin. “Any minute now,” I answered, exasperated.

“Well, tomorrow’s a new moon,” she said, dabbing a tissue on the tiny wound where a speck of blood had pooled.

“Is it?” I winced.
“Yep. Babies love to be born on new moons.” She smiled. It was Tuesday. I went into labor on Wednesday.

For decades, Christians have been waging culture wars on everything from Harry Potter to the Enneagram, warning us that the devil could be at work through anything from songs to Starbucks cups to yoga. But why is it so easy for some to believe that the devil is more powerful than the divine? As if God’s hands are tied while the devil is busy planning elaborate schemes of deception delivered in the form of cups of coffee.

I don’t think God worries over Starbucks cups.

In addition to having suspicions about the stars, Christians have dismissed practices honoring the cycles of the moon and the celebrations thereof as “pagan” and dangerous, without regard for nuance. But is it true that there is no value in what the moon can reveal to us? As if God didn’t create the moon, glorious, with a wisdom and power all its own. The apostle Paul says, “The sun has one kind of glory, the moon has another kind of glory, and the stars have another kind of glory (but one star is different from another star in its glory)” (1 Cor. 15:41).

The moon is our closest celestial neighbor and, like the rest of the cosmos, one of our oldest relatives. Since early in their existence, humans have lived by the moon, keeping track of time by its cycles. Our calendars—including the Hebrew calendar—are lunar, looking to the moon and its phases in the night sky as a guide for the organization of the months.

We have long planned in accordance with the moon and made decisions in harmony with the seasons and constellations. And it didn’t take long for us to realize that in addition to influencing our understanding of time, the lunar cycle has an effect on all kinds of life on earth. The moon’s power holds sway on everything from bird migrations to the Great Barrier Reef to ocean tides pushing and pulling against the shore like a synchronized dance.

It’s no wonder that many communities have tuned into the moon’s cosmic energy, engaging in ceremonies honoring her wisdom. Throughout history, millions have gathered to sway and sing under her light, which waxes and wanes like the flow of our bodies in movement. Over time, however, we stopped looking to God’s creation for guidance and instead were motivated by domination and productivity. Industrialization began ripping apart the human-nature bond, and instead of placing value in cycles and mysteries, we deemed them dangerous.

The psalmist attests that “God made the moon for the seasons” (Ps. 104:19). The moon and her gravitational pull are responsible for them. Much of the Western world takes the seasons for granted. The genetically modified foods that decorate our shelves and ruin our soil are evidence of our vain attempts at mastery over the land. We eat strawberries year-round, a luxury of the privileged. But for the ancient world and much of the globe today, seasons and sustenance go hand in hand. And the moon plays a great role in this.

In the Bible, for example, the seasons of the year are marked with special festivals. One such festival is Rosh Chodesh, the festival of the new moon, when the Israelites were to bring an offering to God. During biblical times, appointed messengers watched for the first visible appearance of this day, signaling to the rest of the community by igniting fires on the mountaintops and blowing trumpets in celebration.

Historically, God’s people are a community gloriously tuned in to the rhythms and flow of the natural world and they have God to thank for this. Observing the new moon was the very first commandment given to the Jewish people (Exod. 12:1–2). New moon festivals were marked by social or family feasts and the ceasing of labor and trade. Fasting and mourning weren’t allowed. This time signified new beginnings. It was a time of rest and celebration, a time of rejuvenation. Age-old farming practices, too, consider the time of the new moon, or waxing phases, as a time of fertility.

Have you ever looked at a full moon and thought about how marvelous it is that although it is over two hundred thousand miles away, our naked eye can see the battered surface where colliding asteroids and comets have left their mark? Generations past have looked upon the moon and wondered about her too. Future generations will do the same. She tethers us to our ancestors, beckoning us to remember. Acknowledging this celestial relative brings us back to our own bodies, our lineages, our lives.

The lens of the moon is the lens of change, mirroring the cycles of our lives. Cycles of rest abide alongside cycles of harvest. The two lead to moments of embodiment—time we can spend clearing and reflecting. The moon accompanies us wherever and however we are, inviting us into these creative processes inside and outside of ourselves.

It’s dark outside as I write these words. I look out my window to get a glimpse of the moon for inspiration. I notice she is waxing, invisible. Would you believe it? A New Moon. I light a candle and remember the Israelites lighting their fires and blowing their trumpets as a call to celebrate newness. It is a time to engage in rest and rejuvenation. I think about the ways I can honor this sacred time like God commanded the Israelites to do in an invitation to be fully present, to remember, to feast, and to rest. In a world that emphasizes power, control, production, and greed, our moon asks us to pause and reflect. She coaxes us to connect.

In Genesis, God puts the moon in place to govern the night. Science confirms that the darker the night, the brighter she shines—not from her own light but from the reflection of the light of the sun across the universe.

In the same way, the Talmud says that we don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are. Perhaps the moon reminds us that the light we shine is a reflection of the divine.

Like her, we are mirrors.

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** The above reflection was taken from Day 30 of my last book, Sacred Belonging. I decided to re-post here for two reasons: 1) today is a New Moon, of course. And 2) Next Wednesday the Lenten season begins! To celebrate, Baker Book House is offering a 40% discount (and free shipping!) now through March 14! Use code ARMASLENT at checkout.

If you haven’t read Sacred Belonging, now is the perfect time to do so—especially during Lent, a season I’ve always cherished not just as a time of personal reflection but as a movement toward something beyond myself. I grew up in an immigrant Catholic church where Lent wasn’t merely observed but embodied, woven into our bones with fasting and longing, ritual and return. As I grew older and my faith stretched and reshaped itself, this season shifted, but it always remained.

Working on Sacred Belonging was a deepening of that journey—a widening of faith beyond the contours of a personal God who lives only “in my heart.” It became an invitation to see myself as part of something vast, a sacred entanglement of beings, living and breathing, breaking and healing, each of us bound to one another in ways we cannot always name but surely know.

This is why I wrote a devotional, despite having read one in years. They often felt like another task, another metric for spiritual self-improvement—what I must do to be better. And while there’s always room for growth, I’ve come to believe that Lent is a time of remembering. It’s about returning to the web of life that holds us, seeing the divine in what is vast and what is small, in what is fragile and what endures.

Perhaps this Lent is an invitation to see yourself as part of something holy and uncontainable. If Sacred Belonging can walk with you in that, I’d be honored. The book offers 40 reflections for each day of the season—on creation, spirit, the body (collective and individual), wisdom (ancestral, embodied, spiritual), and the feminine (which lives in each of us in its own way).

If you already have a Lenten devotional planned, then still take advantage of this deal! You can always read it later :)