I Got Mooned

Mooning was very popular when I was in my twenties and thirties. I did it once and I'm memorialized on a VHS tape. It's embarrassing to watch your best friend project your image on television while your pants are going down and up in slow motion.

Streaking was also something many people did around those times. Thank god I can say I've never done that. I have trouble getting naked in a men's locker room. My service days were fraught with days trying to find an empty shower or unoccupied bathroom.

I stayed up late last night to watch the total lunar eclipse.  It was spectacular in a leisurely way. I didn't have the patience to sit out in the yard for the entire event. I watched "Da Vinci's Demons" on Starz and had a live feed of the eclipse on the all-in-one computer screen. The image was in Hi-Def with surround sound. The Moon made very little noise.

A shadow began to appear on the moon as it began to align with the earth and sun at 10:58 p.m. Over the next fifty-five minutes I alternately watched Da Vinci, the computer and the real moon. It was sweatshirt weather so I was comfortable outside. At the hour mark I doused the low voltage and porch lights. I went outside, sat down and looked up to the heavens. The blood moon would appear at 12:07 a.m. I had seven minutes to go.

At 12:03 a.m. a cloud cover obliterated the moon. I watched the rest of the eclipse on the computer screen. I'm not sure that even counts. I'm not too concerned as I'll have the chance to see three more blood moons over the next seventeen months.

Every time I watch a celestial event I think about 200,000-year-old man (and woman). What must they have thought about such things? I'm sure their lives were fraught with superstitions. Perhaps they thought the god of darkness was pulling a shade over the bright round orb in the sky?

The years have made us wise. We no longer have irrational beliefs or false notions about scientific events, that is, most of us don't.

The 73-year-old televangelist and founder of Texas' Cornerstone Church, Pastor John Hagee claims the four blood moons that will soon appear in the skies over America are evidence of a future "world shaking event."

He points to Acts 2:19-20 which reads. "And I will show wonders in Heaven above and signs in the Earth beneath, the sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord."

Hagee points out each of the blood moons happen on a religiously significant day.

Last night was the first night of Passover. On Oct. 8, the blood moon will occur during the Feast of Tabernacles or Sukkot. Another will occur during Passover on April 4, 2015. The last will happen on Sept. 28, 2015 also Sukkot, all Jewish days of celebration and contemplation.

For proof of his theory, Hagee finds connections between past tetrads (four blood moons in succession) and important events in the life of the Jewish people.

In 1493, a tetrad occurred while the Jews were being expelled from Spain. Another tetrad occurred in 1949, soon after the state of Israel was founded. The skies saw another tetrad in 1967, during the Six-Day War between the Arabs and Israelis.

Many other events took place in years of a tetrad. While the Jews were being expelled from Spain in 1493, Spanish Pope Alexander VI divided America between Spain and Portugal. The Jews were only allowed passage to the Portugal side. In 1949 the first Jewish family show, "The Goldberg's" premiered on CBS. Many Jewish people attended the 1967 Barbara Streisand performance of A Happening in Central Park in New York.

I'm not sure I'm ready to surrender to a "world shaking event" just yet. We made it through comet Hale-Bopp in 1997, Nostradamus' prediction of a "great terror from the sky" ending the world in July of 1999, the prophesy of a three mile thick Antarctic ice mass by May 5, 2000 and the 2006 end of civilization forecast by God's Church minister Ronald Weinland. And don't forget our most recent escape from hell-fire and brimstone the end of the world Mayan prediction 16 months ago.

I'm not bothered by these dire predictions. What bothers me is the prediction the end of the world coincides with Jewish events. I carry enough fundamental guilt as is. It took the Catholic Church nearly 2,000 years to stop blaming Jews for the crucifixion of Jesus. To be blamed for the end of the world, I'll never be forgiven for that.