Holding On To The Heavenly

on miracles and wonder and earthly things

It’s been one week since the Great North American Eclipse. And I find myself asking, “Did it really happen? Was it as amazing as I recall? What were the colors like just before totality?” It all seems like a bit of a blurry, 90 second dream.

I continue to talk about it with our kids so that we can collectively patch together a viable memory that feels more tangible. Just in these last few days though, I am beginning to wonder if we are not meant to have something tangible. Because how do we ever hold on to the heavenly?

Before the eclipse began, after hours upon hours of traffic leading into our beloved Adirondack Park, we (my future sister-in-law, my daughter and I) did a plunge into the chilly waters of our spring fed lake. While it was a warm day for April, bits of snow could still be found tucked in among the shade of the trees. We had yet to turn the plumbing on in the cabin from the winter. What I’m saying is, though the ice had melted and this wasn’t technically polar, this was a very cold plunge.

And I remember everything about those 90 seconds.

I know how the lake looked. I could describe in glorious detail the feeling of running and diving under that water. I could fill pages telling you about the way it felt and the energy it created. The sound of those on shore cheering us on. How nothing was cold except my feet. I could tell you about the sharp pain of walking along the pebbles and the soothing grace the green moss was for my tender toes. Sitting here now as I write, in my mind I am back in the water. I can get there instantly. But the eclipse remains out of reach.

In the week leading up to the eclipse the kids and I did a deep dive into all things eclipse. We found an image from the 1878 eclipse¹ and the astonishing thing for me wasn’t the beauty of the eclipse as pictured but that we were looking at something from 1878. The image fell flat. As does every image I have seen of the eclipse we experienced. I have scrolled through my phone and all over the internet and the best image I have found does not come close to demonstrating what a total eclipse is.

As we were waiting for our family to arrive at the cabin that afternoon I sat on the deck and pulled out Annie Dillard’s essay “Total Eclipse.” In it she writes,

“Seeing a partial eclipse bears the same relation to seeing a total eclipse as kissing a man does to marrying him, or as flying in an airplane does to falling out of an airplane.”

Ah. Now we were getting somewhere.

I read the words out loud to our daughter, she basked in Dillard’s words and the early afternoon sun as we both nodded our heads. This comes closer to saying what we hoped an eclipse would conjure up. Wonder. Awe.

Dillard on the deck as we waited for the eclipse.

As darkness fell around us we admired the strangeness of it all. It was like the partial eclipse we had experienced, until, just as Dillard said, it wasn’t. The color changed. Sometimes as I think about it I remember the deep blue, other times I remember things sort of hazy or other times I recall orange hues. Was it all of them? Perhaps. I really am uncertain.

This is what I know. The loons knew it was coming. They began to call out their tremolo before the light changed. When I think of the eclipse I think of the loons and their cries of confusion before all was quiet. Then there was an audible, collective gasp. It felt as if the whole world was gasping at the wonder of what we saw. My gasp flew out of my depths in a painful way. I could not have forced it down if I tried. Awe. Wonder. And then laughter, because my body could not quite contain what it was seeing. Why? Because it was heavenly. And our good, good bodies, made in the image of God are the beautiful stuff of humanity. Made for the earth. Not the heavens. Not yet.

It occurs to me this is why I can replay with clarity the plunge into the lake. It’s the stuff of humanity. Flesh, bones, blood, crashing into creation. This is altogether different than witnessing something heavenly that requires nothing of us. The moon and sun and earth will do this particular dance whether I am watching or not. In fact, one of the more remarkable things we learned in our week of eclipse study is that total eclipses happen regularly. That which is a once in a lifetime thing for me, happens again in the heavens in eighteen months, and again eighteen months² after that, and again eighteen months after that.

While I don’t have a clear picture of the eclipse in my head, and have nothing to hold on to, I do know that experiencing the heavenly was worth the traffic, and the hype, and the build up-every last bit of it and then some. Perhaps holding on to the heavenly is not the point at all. Not for now.

To witness, if even for a fleeting 90 seconds, something that causes you to be actually breathless, thats the point. The witness is the gift.

I wonder how many miracles, breakthroughs of heaven, awe-inspiring moments we miss each day because we are busy looking for the tangible. I hope that what remains remain within me as I continue to reflect on the eclipse is the knowing that miracles require nothing of us, that the realest thing you can experience is likely the intangible.

Because I do know the best hope we have of catching awe and wonder as humans is through art, I had each of our kids write a poem to help them remember their eclipse experience. Our youngest said it was indescribable. And I think he was the most accurate.

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1. sometimes we can be the most homeschooliest!

2. (give or take)