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| Moment of Totality, August 21, 2017, Lonedell, MO. |
Along with millions of other
people, my husband and son and I were excited to learn that we were living in
the path of the solar eclipse this week. I remembered seeing the partial
eclipse in 1979 when I was a kid in Tulsa, and it was an amazing experience.
Wanting to fully experience the full effect this time, we decided to travel a
few miles from our home to a retreat center fully in the path of totality that
also had a sweeping vista that would allow us to see much of the horizon around
us.
For more than an hour, using
glasses and cameras with eclipse filters, we watched the shadow of the moon
interpose itself over the sun. With the help of special apps, we were able to
input our location and be told exactly when it was safe to look at the eclipse
directly at the time of full coverage.
As totality approached, the
shadows on the ground grew sharper. Although we were surrounded by all kinds of
wildlife, a profound stillness and silence began as the shadow of the moon
slipped completely over the face of the sun. For many seconds there was
silence—and the light turned a bluish-purple the likes of which I have never
seen before. Stars and planets appeared overhead.
From a nearby town, we could
then hear people shouting in amazement. Some people nearby set off a burst of
fireworks. But mostly, for 2 minutes and 40 seconds, it was like a curtain was
drawn back from across the heavens, and the stars and planets seemed to vibrate
to a lilting praise song to the Almighty.
I had been led to expect
darkness, but there was actually a living presence of light that dazzled the
eye, especially after all those minutes spent wearing eclipse glasses. The
temperature dropped significantly. The wind grew still so that even the trees
seemed to hold their collective breath.
It’s funny. In the writings
such as the books of Joel 3, Isaiah
13, or Job
9, the darkness similar to solar
eclipses was represented as signs of God’s wrath, invoking feelings of terror
and dread. But those were not the scriptural images that came to mind.
Instead, I was reminded of
the passages in Psalm 89
and in Deuteronomy 10:14-19 that reminds us that “heaven and all the heavens of
heaven,” and the Earth and all that is in it belong to God. Not only are we are
blessed to be given this beautiful, fragile speck of a planet that carries us
through the vast expanse that lay before me in the middle of the day, we are
also charged and trusted to care for creation, including each other, in
humility and service, as the passage in Deuteronomy affirms in covenantal
language.
I recalled Psalm
8, Psalm
102, and Psalm
19, which portray the heavens as the
awe-inspiring work of the fingers of God, plaiting together the very fabric of
heaven, fashioning the celestial bodies and setting them on their courses as a
master craftsman, felt with the psalmist the deep humility invoked by the wonders
that spun before us overhead. This last text especially came to me as I reeled
in wonder, and I remembered Haydn’s use of it in his oratorio on the Creation:
The heavens are telling the glory of
God,
The wonder of His work displays the firmament.
In all the lands resounds the word.
Never perceived, ever understood,
ever, ever, ever understood.
The heavens are telling the glory of
God,
The wonder of His work,
The wonder of His work displays the firmament.
All too soon, it was over, and the blue opaque curtain fell
back across the sky as the sun began to emerge from behind the shadow of the
moon. The birds and insects resumed their songs. The surrounding countryside seemed
to shake itself from its collective-breath-holding, exhale, and resume.
The people in the next town gave another great shout, and
then, being true Midwesterners, probably scrambled into their cars to take part
in creating a 50-mile-long traffic jam on all the major highways leading away
from the path of the eclipse. For another hour, the eclipse subsided overhead. And
yet, the resounding echo of the music of the heavens lingered in my ear as it
never had to me before, a low susurration resident in the beautiful stillness of
the amethyst light that lay over us like a mantle. Yet we are reminded, even now, that the
heavens ARE telling the glory of God, and calling on us to do the same.
