Last night, the overcast sky obscured the full moon but tonight, the beautiful moon, a day older, shines bright and beams down on me generously. This is the fourth full moon since Charles and I started the Soul Play Family 365 Experiment and it reminds me of the natural cycle of Life/Death/Life.

Life is cyclical—it progresses in a recurring circular motion. The sun rises in the morning, sets in the evening, and it rises again the next morning. Day follows night and night follows day. Seasons come and go in cycles: rebirth in the spring follows death in the winter. Months come and go in cycles: January follows December. Days of the week come and go in cycles: Monday follows Sunday.

I find this cyclical nature of Life comforting and reassuring as I explore, and experiment with, my own creative cycle. My arc of growth follows the Life/Death/Life cycle like everything else in nature: first, the incubating/germinating phase; then the creating/manifesting phase, followed by the shedding/discarding phase; and then it all begins again with the incubating/germinating phase for rebirth and re-creation. It’s not a linear progression shooting up in a straight line, but a circular progression rising in an upward spiral.

As I look up at the velvety night sky surrounding the Lunar Queen with her halo circles, I am reminded of what Anaïs Nin said about our growth:

“We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.”