A total solar eclipse is an astronomically improbable event. We just so happen to live on a planet with a moon exactly the right size, and orbiting at exactly the right distance, to appear roughly the same size in the sky as our sun. The convergence of these facts doesn’t need to produce such an unfathomably beautiful event in order to be astounding. It’s a happy accident, bordering on a sense that the world we live on, the air we breathe, the universe we inhabit may be…MAY BE…fine tuned. An expression of the imagination of an artist painting brushstrokes in the language of physics. The details are enough to take any thinking person’s breath away.
I find the idea of a creator intriguing, but not convincing. At least not as people have imagined it in our religions. But for two-hundred and eleven seconds on April 8th I understood the romance of the idea that there’s someone, or something, behind the curtain pulling the strings just a little bit better.
We did everything right. Better than we could’ve hoped for. We arranged for front-row seats to the biggest show in the solar system months in advance. We corralled family members to join us. We travelled over 1,000 miles. We arranged for photography rentals and eclipse glasses to protect our eyes. And despite all that preparation, it still felt like we weren’t supposed to see the show we signed up for. The morning of the eclipse, the sky was carpeted with clouds thick enough to disperse the sunlight to the point it couldn’t be located in the sky.
We got into position. We counted down the minutes, hoping for a break in the clouds that never materialized for long enough to offer any confidence we’d be able to participate in the festivities sweeping across the continent. Fifteen minutes. Ten minutes. Five minutes. Hardly a break. Two minutes. Thirty seconds.
Thirty seconds. It was with roughly that much time that the sky parted, reminiscent of the way the Bible describes how the sea did for Moses. A crack in the cloud cover, exactly large enough for the overlapping bodies of the sun and moon to peek through. A diamond ring. Totality. A glorious, improbable, unfathomably beautiful two-hundred and eleven seconds.
The only thing that wasn’t unlikely about that day was the company we kept. For years I’d dreamt of seeing a total solar eclipse. How fortunate I was to be able to share such a unique experience with generations of my family. My parents, my cousins, their children, my wife. Our daughter, not yet born. Three generations of Clarke’s, all together, in the shadow of the moon. A religious experience.