Eclipses & Epiphanies
Last week, my social media feed, for at least twenty-four hours, was filled with videos and photos of the total solar eclipse. Friends from near and far, some from our very own Meeting, traveled to the path of totality, and witnessed one of the most spectacular celestial events for us earth dwellers.
Seven years ago, a total solar eclipse passed through the United States, and studies of that event showed that 150 million people witnessed the eclipse live, with many million more watching live on television. The last eclipse broke all records for collective viewership, noting it was the most viewed event in our history.
We cannot downplay the anthropological significance of this. Surely hundreds of millions of human souls beholding such a celestial spectacle, together, will have impacts on our culture. Another study of twitter messages during and immediately around the last eclipse created an observable trend. Twitter, normally a social media platform that incites rants and raves, became undeniably more gentle, humble, and reflected the collective awe and wonder millions of us were experiencing in real time.
One video of last week’s eclipse that impacted me deeply was of a small family positioned on the snow covered banks of a frozen lake. As the eclipse is just beginning the video is chaotic with familiar awe filled expressions of, “OH MY GOD!” the camera spinning around attempting to capture the spectacle of the moment. But, just as the black disk of the moon completely covers the sun, the expressions stop, and much like the birds and animals during totality, the humans grow completely silent. I thought, for a moment, that the audio had been faded out, and the meditative music in the background brought forward. I’m going to show you the video in a moment, but notice the sniffles you hear from the person holding their phone…it is clear to me that once totality had set in, awe filled silence descended on this family.
The word eclipse has Greek roots, a term which meant abandonment or a failing. This word hints that not all humans throughout history viewed the spectacle of a total solar eclipse with awe and wonder. Those of us in a post-agrarian society may not understand the seeming curse, or bad omen, of the sun being taken away.
Scientific development appears to have altered our perception of these events. And yet, despite our understanding of what is happening and its temporary spectacle, scientists note the baffling coincidence of our planet’s solar eclipse experience. That the moon takes up the exact same amount of space, but just a little bit more than the Sun, is in the words of one scientist, “just an absolutely bonkers coincidence.” He continues, “The Sun is 400 times further away from us than the moon is. It’s also almost exactly 400 times bigger.” The earth will likely reach a point where a total solar eclipse is no longer possible, as the moon is moving about one inch away from the earth each year. One person, noting the absurdity of this moon/earth/sun arrangement, said, “If we had interstellar tourism, surely aliens from another planet would travel to Earth for this seeming anomaly in the cosmos.”
These events, as we witnessed in the video, pull us into stunned wonder. In a sense, hundreds of millions of human hearts are experiencing epiphanies, which we, who find ourselves in spiritual communities, are familiar with.
On this Sunday, the Christian Church reads the story of Jesus’ closest followers in the days after his resurrection. Jesus reveals himself to people who should be familiar with him, and they struggle to recognize him. In the Gospel of Luke, chapter 24 we read,
While they were still talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”
They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost. He said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your minds? Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.”
When he had said this, he showed them his hands and feet. And while they still did not believe it because of joy and amazement, he asked them, “Do you have anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate it in their presence.
He said to them, “This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.”
Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures.
All of these people who’ve traveled and lived with Jesus up until this point did not fully understand the scriptures. One of my favorite writers says this about epiphanies, like the one Jesus’ disciples experienced after his resurrection, “Epiphanies flood us with meaning with a felt sense of wholeness and holiness of life. Despite the increase of cynicism, and the rise of Nihilism, our souls have an inborn expectation to have profound experiences of luminosity and the hidden unity of life. The luminous appears as something uncanny and mysterious that gives us a sense of the presence of the divine and awakens a deeply felt intuition of the rightness of the situation or an event.”
Whether it be solar eclipses or beholding the resurrected Christ, our lives will be blessed with several epiphanies, often initiated by events so remarkable and spectacular that we cannot help but be confronted with the “presence of the divine.” As a result, we will awaken to a “deeply felt intuition of the rightness” of our inner g’ leading.
Just like in the video of that family taking in the eclipse, these miraculous, spectacular, awe-inspiring moments often usher us into wordless places where silence seems to be the only reverent thing to do. Is it too much to hope that hundreds of millions of people’s hearts will be changed by such an encounter with the absurdity of an improbable event such as a total solar eclipse? Maybe so. But, it seems that our task, as followers of the way of truth and light, is to allow the epiphanies we each have experienced to continue creating the spaces for these divine reorientations to our shared humanity and the spectacle of life that begs us to create peace, justice, and liberation for all.
Our Friend Bethany Lee wrote a poem called Spellbound, that I’d like to read now…
Spellbound
by Bethany lee
The trick is to see people
past all the forms
our masks of fear can take
Practice on dear friends
and small babies and complete strangers
Then move on to those who confuse
irritate, or oppose you
Once you have the knack
of seeing the essence
at the center of it all
you must only remember to do so
and suddenly
at every moment
the world is filled with light
Those of us who pursue the Light of God invite into our lives the possibility of “seeing the essence at the center of it all.” And, when such epiphanies arrive, it comes as a sort of miracle, an “aha” moment that connects many things in our lives together. I trust many of you know such moments, and as Bethany reminds us, perhaps the only task for those of us who call ourselves Christians and Quakers is simply to remember. To remember, to reacquaint ourselves with the profound wisdom of our lives’ epiphanies may be all we need to be in the presence, at every moment, of a world filled with light.
What are the epiphanies you’ve had in your life? When have things come together, or connected in such a way to bring you into a profound sense of a world filled with light?
Are you hoping for an epiphany? What remains disconnected, or unsettled in your life? How are you actively inviting wonder into your spiritual life?