April 12, 2024
My husband, William, road-tripped to Arkansas this week, to view the solar eclipse in totality. If you have spoken with him at all since then you already know this, because it is all he can talk about now. That, and making plans to see the next eclipse, no matter how far he needs to travel. He said the experience was much more powerful than he'd even imagined it would be: magical and sacred. Although he was traveling alone, William ended up watching the eclipse in an Arkansas state park with hundreds of other people nearby. The cheering and laughing around him, and sharing such a unique and intense moment in time with other seekers, was part of what made the whole experience.
Though road-trips are truly my favorite activity in the world, I did not go on this one, for a whole host of reasons. My eclipse experience was about a mile and a half from our house, on the bluff overlooking downtown Saint Paul. The layers of heavy clouds in Minnesota that day meant my eclipse was shared with not hundreds ooo-ing and ahhh-ing people, but about 30 others up on the bluff, all of us asking one another if we knew what direction the sun should be at that moment. It was uniting in its own way.
Honestly, I don't know if I've ever felt as tender toward humanity as I did that day. As I watched old and young, people of different races, people who seemed to be of different socio-economic circles, I'm sure people of different political persuasions, all walking toward the bluff with solar glasses in their hands, I felt a rush of love. Softness for everyone up there, everyone traveling near and far, everyone across the country who stopped what they were doing just to look up. Just to experience some wonder at something bigger than ourselves.
Later in the week, I read that internet usage in the United States during the the eclipse dropped by 40%. Whether under sunny skies in Arkansas or cloudy skies in Minnesota, or anywhere in between, we shared this moment. And for the sole purpose of allowing ourselves to pause in awe and wonder.
My prayer for you this week is opportunity to pause in awe and wonder at a holy moment in your life. Maybe your moment will be extraordinary, maybe your moment will be simple: a realization that your heart is beating and your eyes can see and that the breath of the Divine rises and falls with your own. My prayer for you this week is to find a pause in time to look up, or look around, and allow yourself to be in awe.