Wishing upon a rained-out blood moon

I woke up this morning, hoping I could get at least a photograph or two of the elusive “blood moon” lunar eclipse.  I drove out to the Black Bridge, where I knew I could get at least a good shot of the moon before it hit the horizon.

And at about 5:25, when the clouds parted… I caught the moon as it started to eclipse.  And I hoped that the clouds would hold off.

No dice.  The clouds came in and obscured the moon.  Okay, maybe the clouds will move away, so long as I don’t get any –

drip drop drip drop

– rain.  Crap.  Rain’s coming in.  The rain and clouds have ruined the opportunity.  It’s poured and showered off and on this morning, and now the sky looks like it was covered with a big white puffy quilt.

Damn it.  Every time there’s been a celestial eclipse of late, I’ve been thwarted from photographing it.  Rain.  Overcast skies.  Oversleeping.

It’s like someone put a smorgasbord on the dinner table, and I can’t even taste a morsel of it.

There’s two more lunar eclipses in 2015, then I’m probably not going to see the next one until 2022, if I’m lucky enough to live that long.

Because I was hoping, at least for this “blood moon” eclipse, to make some wishes upon the skies.

Wishes of penance and penitence.

Like, for example… I wished that those whom I’ve hurt in my life would find a way to forgive me.  For those whose lives I ruined by my very existence on this planet, those who feel that I have made the world worse by being born on this earth, could forgive me for whatever harm I’ve caused them.

I’d start there and work forward.  I’d ask for one more moment with the people who I loved, the people who cared about me, those very people who were called to glory.  One more moment, one more second of joy and love and hope.

I go through these feelings of loneliness and helplessness and worthlessness.  I don’t know if it’s depression or shellshock or life fatigue.  But I battle them every day.

Believe me, I try to find ways to countermand the distress.  I’ll drive a thousand miles to photograph something.  I’ll read a new book, I’ll study a new technique, I’ll try anything to help me find that there is goodness and kindness in me.

And then there’s this morning.  I wanted to photograph that red moon.  I borrowed a teleconverter to make my telephoto lens twice as powerful, so that I could photograph the craters and marks on the moon.  Heck, I wanted to make my camera lens so powerful, it could pick up Neil Armstrong’s footprints at Tranquility Base.

But then the rain came.  The thunderstorms.  The showers.  The clouds.

It’s almost as if God was saying to me, “Chuck, you’re not going to receive any sort of wish-based absolution. Dan Fogelberg can wish on the moon, you can’t.”

That being said…

Maybe someday there’s a way, before my last heartbeat, to repair what was once damaged.  Maybe there’s a way to heal that which has been gouged.

All I want is to feel like I’m actually doing something right on this earth, that I didn’t just show up as an accident and that God’s been trying to “correct” that accident for the past 51 years.

So I hope all of you will bear with me as I go through these moments.  Maybe in April 2015, I’ll have a better shot at photographing the blood moon.

Maybe then, when the moon turns that coppery orange-red, I can ask the Lord to help me cleanse my failures and make the next portion of my life more successful and fulfilling.

Right now, however… it’s all up to me.

Warts, pains, self-loathing and all.  With or without a blood moon.