The Eclipse of August 21, 2017
The Rev. Dr. Philip Wainwright, Priest Associate of St. Andrew's Church
I feel compelled to write something about my experience of the total eclipse, which I saw in Jackson, Wyoming. Don't feel compelled to read what I write; as a friend of mine says about his e-mail circulars, 'if this doesn't interest you, you know where the delete button is.' I'm including some photographs, hope they don't clog your inbox.
Thekla and I saw the eclipse in Jackson, in the path of 'the totality', thanks to the foresight and planning of some of our family members, who made all the necessary arrangements almost two years ago. We spent the week with them and a day with others who couldn’t stay as long, so we were doubly blessed--for there can be no doubt that seeing the eclipse was as much a blessing from God as spending time with family. And as much a privilege: Psalm 19--‘The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard; yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.’
We climbed about 600 feet up Snow King Mountain, from where we had a superb view over Jackson, with the Elk Refuge, the Gros Ventre Butte, and the Tetons in the distance behind them. It was a beautiful day, the sky cloudless. The totality was scheduled to be complete at 11.36 am, and to last for a bit over two minutes. This was what the scene looked like to my cheap point-and-shoot camera at about 10.15, still on the way up the slope:
By 10.55 the effect was more pronounced:
By 11.30 it was dark enough that the lights in Jackson started coming on automatically:
You can see that the sun was slightly behind us; we had the approved glasses, and they were helpful in knowing how the eclipse was progressing, but the important stuff seemed to be happening on earth, not in the sky. I thought at times I could discern the moon as a sphere through them, rather than deduce its existence from the crescent-shaped bite being taken out of the sun’s disc, but looking back, I think it was just my imagination at work. There were also strange manifestations on the ground that we could not agree on; some of us thought that a mist was rising from the ground, others that it was a visual effect, a ‘shimmering’, caused by the fading light. By this time the eclipse was far advanced, and from this point on my camera starts trying to correct the image. Just before totality, it saw this:
Totality itself, however, was a totally different experience from the fading of the sunlight that preceded it. Nothing proclaimed the power of the sun as much as the fact that while there was even the smallest sliver of it unmasked, there was daylight, even if a much diluted daylight. The moment that last sliver disappeared, it was as though someone drew a black-out curtain, and the world was plunged into darkness. Finally it was possible to look up into the sky without glasses of any kind, and there in the heavens was this strange jet black disc, surrounded by a ghostly veined luminosity which my camera refused to render in any meaningful way. You’ve all seen the images taken by the experts, so that hardly matters, but what those images do not convey is the sense of something totally alien in the sky. It wasn’t just that the sun had disappeared almost at noon, but that it had been replaced by something unknown and unknowable. Light itself seemed to have disappeared, we shivered with the cold, and strangest of all for the sky being so dark, not a star was to be seen in any direction, even though one or two planets or stars usually become visible as the sun sets, when there is still more light than we now had. The impossible object in the sky ruled alone. People all across the hillside were whooping and howling for the entire two minutes of the totality, and while they would no doubt have explained this in some rational or even jocular way, I think the member of our party who said that the sight had stirred something in their lizard brain, that ancient stem at the brain’s root, heard them perfectly.
After two minutes and however many seconds the totality lasted, the resumption of feeble but ordinary light was just as sudden, as the edge of the sun suddenly took back control from the invader, and within a minute we were back in the world we knew, and people started to stream down the side of the mountain. We gathered our stuff together and did the same, but it wasn’t over yet. Some of our party, during a partial eclipse a few years ago, had noticed what they called a ‘pinhole effect’, in which the sun’s light was filtered through the leaves of the trees in such a way that it projected an image of the half-hidden sun on the ground. Now we saw the same thing: as we walked down the path through the trees toward the bottom of the mountain, all of a sudden we were confronted with a sea of solar crescents, showing the progress of the sun’s recovery of its accustomed place:
What still puzzles me is that when you walk through these woods on an ordinary day, you don’t see pinhole images of the complete disc, just random patches of shifting light and shade, but there it was, our last reminder that there was more to all this than any ‘explanation’, however accurate, can convey. Actually, not the last: another came that evening, when we were wondering if we had made the whole thing up. One of Thekla’s friends back in Pittsburgh had remembered an old wives’ tale that brooms stand up straight without support during an eclipse, and had got out a broom and tried it. The picture of the upright broom was not only there on the ubiquitous website that I am sworn never to name, but attached to it were the comments of several others who had tried it for themselves, saying that theirs had done the same. The woman who had posted this is one well known to us, and not likely to be making things up or staging prank photo scenes.
In a cloudless sky, the sun is so bright that we never see it. If we happen to turn our head too fully in its direction, we turn away or close our eyes. Which makes the sun a wonderful metaphor for God; everyone lives daily in His light, but if their thoughts should turn to Him too closely, they usually turn away or shut their eyes. But there He is, all the same, and from time to time He gives each one of us a reminder that there are ways to know Him better, and reasons to do so, despite our instinctive avoidance. Even for types like me, who pride ourselves on having overcome the avoidance reaction and let no opportunity to know Him better escape, totality took me by the scruff of the neck and shook me, reminding me that for all I know or think I know, how much more there is to know!
‘The Mighty One, God the LORD, speaks and summons the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting. Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shines forth. Our God comes, he does not keep silence, before him is a devouring fire, round about him a mighty tempest. He calls to the heavens above and to the earth, that he may judge his people: "Gather to me my faithful ones, who made a covenant with me by sacrifice!" The heavens declare his righteousness, for God himself is judge!’
In a cloudless sky, the sun is so bright that we never see it. If we happen to turn our head too fully in its direction, we turn away or close our eyes. Which makes the sun a wonderful metaphor for God; everyone lives daily in His light, but if their thoughts should turn to Him too closely, they usually turn away or shut their eyes. But there He is, all the same, and from time to time He gives each one of us a reminder that there are ways to know Him better, and reasons to do so, despite our instinctive avoidance. Even for types like me, who pride ourselves on having overcome the avoidance reaction and let no opportunity to know Him better escape, totality took me by the scruff of the neck and shook me, reminding me that for all I know or think I know, how much more there is to know!
‘The Mighty One, God the LORD, speaks and summons the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting. Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shines forth. Our God comes, he does not keep silence, before him is a devouring fire, round about him a mighty tempest. He calls to the heavens above and to the earth, that he may judge his people: "Gather to me my faithful ones, who made a covenant with me by sacrifice!" The heavens declare his righteousness, for God himself is judge!’