What to do with the Moon?What to do with the Moon?I was reading a Discover Magazine recently and the lead article was entitled "What should we do with the moon?" Apparently, space engineers are busy trying to decide what to do with the moon. The big candidates are 1) mine it, 2) put factories on it, and 3)send tourists there. Preferably, all three.
The arrogance of this question "What should we do with the moon?" is so incredible that it leaves me speechless (well, nearly -- then I found my voice). The Moon is our Goddess -- beautiful and real, ruling the night. Imagine a factory on one corner, a large mine on another, and tourists golfing on it on a third. Would we lose our Goddess then?
For me, I wouldn't lose the Goddess, because she is everywhere, but I would lose a profound symbol of her presence. Furthermore, the Moon and Sun would no longer be symmetrical, celestial orbs ruling their respective skies. And in an important sense when this happens to the moon, I will lose a part of the Goddess because if she is everywhere, then she is in the Moon and when we spoil it like we've spoiled Yellowstone, Denali, the Himalayas, the Rockies, Antarctica, the rain forests, ..., then we will be spoiling her and losing her to human greed. We will have to find Her elsewhere. Assuming She wants to be found by us.
The irony in all this is that though paganism is so human, being in many ways the first human religion, mining the moon is also so human. It is what we do. We would mine the universe if we could. With our science and technology we are like gods and goddesses, yet we use our powers to make air conditioned strip malls the size of small countries. We are so beautiful and ugly at the same time.
How can we be pagans and not cry at what we are about to do to the Moon (in the next 100 years)? How can we be pagans and not weep at our travesties. Yet, how can we be pagans and not human? It's the other part of being human that makes us pagans: being reverential towards all life and Nature, loving our fellow flora and fauna, gasping at the beauty of the stars. Humans are both entrepreneurs and spiritual seekers -- a laughable combination until you see it played out in front of your own eyes.
We will lose the Moon. It is going to be forever changed. Somehow knowing that Alan Shepard hit a golf ball on the moon and astronauts rode around in a dune buggy on it hasn't changed it for me -- those first astronauts we explores -- they symbolized the best the human race had to offer. But putting a MacDonald's on the Moon is very different. We will lose a part of our night sky, our sacred sky.
The human race is going to do its best to buy and sell Nature -- a goal that is completely antithetical to being pagan -- at least for me.
Will we lose our Goddess? This is the question "Which part of our humanity will win out, the entrepreneur selling the heavens, or the spiritual wanderer who is not lost, but only seeking?"
