The Power of Eclipse by William Klein

Talking about quantum physics, David Bohm said, “It’s not only stranger than you think, it’s stranger than you can think.”

Every now and then we glimpse a part of the universe that reveals something that is beyond comprehension. Such an experience is a reminder that the feeling of awe is alive and well, beating like a heart in every soul. Awe opens us up in ways we can’t imagine. It’s as if the universe is reminding us, “You think the magic of nature is incredible? Wait until you see what other tricks I have up my sleeve to blow your mind.” 

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel calls it “radical amazement.” Heschel writes:
“The surest way to suppress our ability to understand the meaning of God and the importance of worship is to take things for granted. Indifference to the sublime wonder of living is the root of sin. Wonder or radical amazement is the chief characteristic of the religious man’s attitude toward history and nature.”

Last Monday I had my first experience of a solar eclipse. Scientists were encouraging people to experience it and said it “would not disappoint,” which it didn’t. Although eclipses are common, they usually take place over the ocean, so visibility is rare, but this particular eclipse took place over a mass of land that afforded the most people in history to experience it.

As I spoke to others about it, I was inspired by the common awe that was expressed. I talked with a few people who refused to venture outside to even glimpse this once in a lifetime historical event. One person remarked, “I saw it get dark but I didn’t go outside to see it.” Another person told me how she works at Chipotle. At the moment of full eclipse, they allowed her to go outside and experience it. She told me, “I would’ve done it anyway. They could fire me for all I care. An experience like that doesn’t come around that often.” A few customers stayed in the store.

For a brief moment, people came together to experience “radical amazement” en masse. My sister’s old neighbors from Cork, Ireland traveled to Cleveland to experience it. I was lucky, Owen and Kerry Crotty had science experiments going on as we waited for the full eclipse. We had a colander and the shadows that are supposed to be circles took on crescent moon shapes. In another experiment, Owen held two 90 degree angle objects and one side was sharp while the other side of the shadow was fuzzy.

It got cooler and temps drastically changed. As the gloaming took place, slowly our environment took on a silvery hue, as we wore our eclipse glasses and watched the moon bite into the sun. Birds fought under the tire of a parked car, and they were confused as to what to do. They suddenly fell silent with the exception of a chirping cardinal. In some parts of the city crickets came out and bats took to flight.

As the full eclipse occurred, we could hear a wave of cheers from the park a mile away. Some people blew off fireworks. Cars stopped moving like one of those movies where a giant asteroid is striking the earth and all stop to observe it. There was a perfect circle that looked like a pupil of an eye or a portal into the unknown, and the corona of sunlight around the shadow popped out and blended with the darkness. There was a barely visible small red spot at the bottom of the pupil, and the emanation of silver light from the sun just took it to a whole other level. It was three minutes and 50 seconds of power wrapped in stillness. I didn’t want it to end.

Harper Lee wrote about summer in “To Kill A Mockingbird.” “It was a thousand colors in a parched landscape.”  That’s what this spring experience was for me. It was a kaleidoscopic feeling of wonder and its infinite potential quickened my heart – mystery hung like low laying fog to the ground with a distant surrounding mustard light glow as darkness enveloped the scene. A few stars were visible, too.

Nothing equaled the pupil-like hole with a magnificent silvery iris glow radiating from the sun. It just stared at us. Then a peel of light in the corner of the circle that looked like an old piece of film burning the picture. It was a bursting flower of light manifesting getting brighter and brighter, as we placed our glasses back on. I didn’t want the experience to end, and though it only lasted a few minutes the memory will stay with me. The blue sky reappeared, temps rose and colors returned to normal.

Later there were images popping on the Internet after the fact. The James Webb telescope showed the moon with its craters and silvery fuzzy edges that looked like angel wings in star formation with finely tuned pencil streaks of white scraping a gray emulsified image.

Astronomy author and physicist Ed Ting said, “The sun is 400 times bigger than the moon, but, by happy coincidence, it is also 400 times further away from it, so it appears to be the same size”; hence the reason for the nearly perfect fit of sun and moon circles in the sky.

“Radical amazement.”

We wondered what our ancestors may have thought about the vision when they encountered this vision in antiquity. This feeling of awe would surely inspire some sort of sacrifice in the name of awful beauty. Those who refused to look missed a smile from Creation.