The miracle of an eclipse... and everything else God made
It's Earth Day week. Of course I'm going to talk about nature.
Maybe you’re all tired of hearing about the total eclipse. If so… sorry? (But also not.)
I was in the path of totality both 2017 and in 2024, which I’m fully aware is a huge gift. But the thing is, I really didn’t fully process the experience the first time. In 2017, it was a little hazy where I live, and I was very focused on photography. I got what I thought were pretty good pictures, and I was excited, but afterward I kept thinking, “it wasn’t THAT dark. I don’t think the evening bugs started singing.” Etc., etc.
This time, though, I had a very good friend drive a very long way to gather with us. And we were with family. We took the kids out of school to get to the family property, so we were fully immersed, fully removed from the distraction of the ordinary. And the sky was perfectly clear, low humidity.
And for all those reasons, this time, it truly was magical.
As the slow darkening unfolded, I started remembering things that had not stuck with me from the last time: the way it was sunny, but somehow wrong, like my photos look when I get the wrong F-stop/shutter speed combination in the “underexposed” direction. How nothing really happened at all, visibly, at least, until well into the incursion of the moon across the sun. How those last few seconds before totality you kept holding your breath, thinking this is it, and yet there was more to go. And yes, the birds all settled into trees around us, and in those last few moments, they really did go quiet.
But of course, totality itself was the showstopper. There’s ambient light, however dim, and then, silently and suddenly, the divine light switch shuts off. The diamond at the edge of the sun; the image in the glasses goes black. You whip them off and there it is: the white of the corona around a jet black sun, with midnight blue all around. A pale band of cream/yellow stretching all the way around the horizon. Jupiter on one side of the sun and Venus down below on the other.
I’m not sure even the best photographer can fully capture it, because the camera doesn’t have the subtlety of the human eye. Every totality picture I have seen, the black of the sun was the same black as the sky around it. But that’s not how it was in reality.
The cameras can’t capture the approach, either. Every picture looks like the sun with a scimitar-shaped bite out of it, but when you see it in reality, you can catch the subtle 3D-ness of the moon: the sunlight bouncing off the leading horizon, right where the curve disappears from view. The vague sense of a presence in the foreground, rather than absence of the background that comes out in photos.
And at totality, the sun is a gem in the sky. Truly. An otherworldly beauty, incredibly vivid and technicolor, so crystal clear, you could be forgiven for thinking it looks created by the mind of a brilliant artist.
Oh wait. Duh!
Right?????
No image I have seen has entirely captured the feeling of that moment. I remember in the runup this year, people talking about how last time they cried. I thought, “That’s just silly.”
But I’ll tell you, that moment, that 4-minute string of moments, was drenched in the holy. Especially for someone who finds God most profoundly in creation. And I didn’t cry… but it was only because I didn’t want to miss a moment of the sheer wonder of what my eyes were gifting me.
In the weeks since, people have been talking about the togetherness of that moment. How the things that divide us went away. How we finally found something we recognized as common to us all.
To me— that aforementioned person who craves the soul food of being in fresh air, surrounded by nature— it’s slightly boggling that it requires something so dramatic as an eclipse to achieve that. It seems to obvious to me that the earth God gave us to sustain us is a precious, holy thing, and that we are all deeply, inextricably connected through it.
One of my favorite hymns is “How Great Thou Art,” and it’s because of the nature imagery: the stars, the rolling thunder; wandering the woods and forest glades; looking down from lofty mountain grandeur; the brook, the gentle breeze.
Those were the reasons I arranged the hymn for contemporary ensemble. And by the way, it’s on the list for my funeral, in case anyone wants to know. :) When Christ comes to take me home, I have to believe that it will be into an eternity filled with the glory and majesty and impossible smallness and quiet of creation. Because otherwise, how could God be there at all?
It is Earth Day week, and so I invite everyone who reads this to consider the world around you in all its holiness. To really sink into it, not to gloss over the things so familiar, you don’t even notice them anymore…
Robins hopping around in the grass
The carpenter bees which, as the meme says, have no sense of personal space but won’t hurt you
The way light filters through leaves, with its highlights and shadows
The air, with its precise balance of oxygen and “other” to sustain life
The tricksy breezes which can be blowing on the other side of the street but not here (isn’t that a thing of wonder?)
The way the ants need the wax covering the peony buds for their food, and the peony needs the ants to set it free (isn’t it a wonder how, when we work in harmony with the way things were made, nothing is wasted?)
The warmth of the sun on your back on a chill spring day
The smell of the air when the first raindrops have fallen—not a pretty smell—and the freshness that replaces it following the full shower
The sparkle of sunlight on water, and the way, when you sit in the shade beside a creek, the reflection of that light dances on the underside of the canopy and all along the tree trunks
The scent of invisible blossoms that flickers past you in the spring and runs away, and you can’t even always pinpoint the source
The soothing sound of crickets you will never see, but you know they’re there with absolute certainty, because they touch your senses
God is in these things and a multitude more. Invisible, and yet right in front of us, in our senses.
This is the earth God gave us to steward, to tend. The earth that gives back to us every moment, sustaining us in body, yes, but at least as importantly, in the soul.
Sink into that gift this week, and open yourself to the heart of God--the incredible, spacious, limitless imagination and creativity and joy that God displays.
And perhaps, once you have internalized the magnitude of the gift, the very awareness of it will suggest ways to honor the gift in your living.
(Here’s a post I wrote several years ago with practical ideas for living with respect for creation.)