The Parable of the Harvest Moon

One day while teaching, Josh was asked, ”Teacher, why does autumn sometimes make me melancholy and other times fill me with excitement?”

Josh spoke thus:

Two lovers were sharing a harvest moon.

“That moon is enormous,” one lover said, “I’ve never seen a bigger moon.”

The second lover, aware of the optical illusion that made the moon look larger than it was, said, “Our love is the reason it’s so large.  Looking down on us here, as we look up at the moon in the sky, the moon is overflowing with our love.”

The first lover, whose tastes eschewed florid imagery and romantic language, blushed, gave the second lover’s hand a squeeze and moved closer to the second lover.  The first lover felt the second lover’s heart beat.

The two lovers’ hearts were syncopated at the beginning, but as they sat, their pulses seemed to synchronize, in the way that metronomes will synchronize if placed on a movable surface together.  The first lover rejected the metaphor but held the second lover closer nonetheless.

“Why do they call it the harvest moon?” the second lover asked.  The second lover knew that there were competing theories about the origin of the phrase.  

An almanac the second lover had read had indicated that the concept of the harvest moon was of Native American origin.  The harvest moon was the last full moon before the equinox, which was the time of harvesting.  

Another story contended that the harvest moon was later in the year and followed, rather than preceded, the harvest.  The theory was that such a moon would appear larger and brighter after the crops had been cleared from the fields and the leaves had fallen from the trees. This was in direct conflict with the optical illusion of a large moon created by objects near the horizon--like fully-foliaged trees--but the theory did not address this conflict.  

Yet another view was that the harvest moon was so called because workers could harvest by night when the moon was unusually bright.

Regardless of the etymology, the second lover told the first lover, “The harvest moon is the moon when lovers reap the fruits of their sowing.”

“So which are you doing?” the first lover asked, “Reaping or sowing?”

“It’s a harvesting moon,” the second lover said.

“I’ve never been harvested,” the first lover said, “I hope it isn’t painful.”