Friday night the sky was clearing as the post-Christmas heavy weather lifted. I watched the full moon rise through a veil of hazy snow. Our luminous satellite, la belle Lune, marks time for our world, counts out the days, turning the tides and illuminating our nights.

Full Moon marks an apex, a peak expansion, and a pause before contraction begins. Like the recent Solstice (literally ‘sun stands still’) there is an implied coming to rest. It is a good time for contemplation, meditation and prayer.

It’s traditional: a great deal of reflection and recounting the old year is swirling around us now, and of course it’s good to review and reflect. Then it’s time to put away that which doesn’t serve us going forward. This year we make our year-end lists and New Years vows under the light of the waning moon, gently moving forward into the dreaming dark.

Why not bundle up the disappointments and regrets of the year passed and release them into the night sky? And as you make those vows to-be-do have more in 2013, wrap them in lunar light and set them aloft as well. Make room in your heart for the tide of change to move freely.

From now until New Moon 1/11/2013 is the time to complete and clear away whatever is not needed for the fresh plantings of the New Year. Let the Moon lead you into the New Year, luminous with possibility. Feel the divine support inherent in the flow of time, as marked by the light of the Moon.