Eclipse 2024

The 2024 solar eclipse has come and gone. According to Wikipedia, over 50 million people viewed it in its totality. Many, like me, traveled long distances to experience this astronomical phenomenon.

One more event in a long list of life events that has come and gone. An experience that either leaves a mark or doesn’t, depending on how we see.

In his magnificent poem “The Four Quartets” T. S. Elliott wrote,

“ We had the experience but missed the meaning,

And approach to the meaning restores the experience

In a different form, beyond any meaning

We can assign to happiness..”

How many experiences have I had, where the significance it carried with it is lost simply because I am not paying attention? And yet, if I look back at these events with new eyes, meaning emerges. In the poet Mary Oliver’s book of essays “Upstream,” she writes

“…the beauty and the mystery of the world, out in the fields or deep inside books—can re-dignify the worst-stung heart.” …“What does it mean, say the words, that the earth is so beautiful? And what shall I do about it? What is the gift that I should bring to the world? What is the life that I should live?” … Attention is the beginning of devotion”

I was with my wife and son’s family at the Blues Sky Winery in South Central Illinois. We arrived early, so found a nice spot on the lawn to set up tents tables, and chairs. We were prepared and I was particularly excited. I had witnessed the eclipse of 2017 in the Idaho countryside and was surprised at my reaction then. I was sure the excitement would be less, as a repeat viewing of anything is.

The day was beautiful. The sky cloudless. We had escaped the gloomy weather prediction of overcast skies. While waiting we snacked, walked around the winery, watched my granddaughter and her circus troupe perform to much applause, and listened to a silver-haired band play the soundtrack of my youth—Jackson Brown, CSN&Y, Grateful Dead, James Taylor.

While waiting for the great event, I overheard several men and women discussing the science behind the solar eclipse, with all its intricacies and nuances that I did not understand. It was all very interesting until the actual eclipse began. At that moment I recalled this poem by Walt Whitman:

When I heard the learn’d astronomer,

When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,

When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,

When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,

Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,

In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,

Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

 As the moon moved in front of the sun, taking ever larger bites out of its light, the crowd began to settle down into their chairs. The band continued to play as the sky grew darker and darker, the light around us evolving from bright yellow to a subdued silver, having the same effect on me…I became subdued, surrounded by a silver glow.

Then, the band stoppped, as  the sun is totally blocked by the moon. All but a silver Carona surrounds a black circle, with the tiny red dots evenly spaced at the lower edge of the Carona. This I had never seen before and am sure I will never see again.

Then the unexpected happened. My legs began to quiver, and I could not will them to stop. It was an uncontrollable response to something so large and mysterious and fantastic that my body had to respond. Knowing the science of what was going on did not matter. The experience is all that did. I felt like my ancestors must have felt the first time they witnessed a solar eclipse.

I did not ask anyone else if they experienced the same thing. This was my experience, and I am going to hold on to it. I have lived long enough to know that we can have a common experience, but have a different reaction or interpretation to it.  A dinner can be exquisite to one person and unappealing to another. A song, a movie, a speaker, a book, a vacation, all can be experienced by a group or multitudes, and a different meaning is extracted—or no meaning at all.

We all remember the Charlie Brown cartoon, where Charlie, Lucy, and Linus are lying on their backs, looking up at the clouds. Lucy asks what Linus sees. He says “ I see the country of Honduras, or now I see the stoning of Stephen, with St. Paul standing beside, or now I see the painting of Whistler’s Mother. Lucy then asks Charlie Brown what he sees, “well, I was going to say a ducky and horsy, but I’ve changed my mind”.

WHile viewing an eclipse, our ancestors saw the end of the world. For some in my midst that day it was an excuse to party. For me, I was somewhere in between.

Mary Oliver and Walt Whitman are right. The sadness or the joy of this life comes down to three simple things:

1. Where am I looking?
2. At what am I looking?
3. How am I looking?

Looking is a skill I practice for life. I am in training to pay attention to what is going on in front of me, to who I am with, to how deeply I look and listen to others and to the world around me. If I truly pay attention, my legs will quiver often with the awesome wonder of this life.

Psalm 33:5 says “The earth is full of the loving-kindness of the Lord.”  I know in this day, the wars, the unhealthy and spiritually sick politics, the divisions and injustices we foist upon each other is hard to ignore, and I don’t advocate ignoring. I advocate for seeing beyond the ugliness and seeing beauty and mystery and wonder that is around us every day. Maybe by bringing a perspective of wonder, mystery, and awe, we can bring that loving kindness, healing, and understanding to each other.

Scientists say a solar eclipse is happening somewhere two to five times a year, yet most of the earth’s population will never see one. Mystery and wonder is happening every day and every night. May I have eyes to see it.