Eclipse awe and the Rapture blues

 

While everyone else was rushing outside to stare at the sun (with protective glasses, we hope), I was sitting at my desk with the patio door open to a quiet and calm backyard. I wasn’t so interested in seeing the aura around the sun—heaven knows there’ve been enough pictures online and in the news media. I was more interested in watching the world go from light to dark and back again. The darkening was a slow thing, and the air took on a funny color, like it sometimes does before a Texas storm. Out my door and over the neighbor’s roof I could watch a patch of high clouds to the southwest without danger of looking at the sun. The dappling on the clouds changed slowly and was fun to watch. I didn’t see the crescent-shaped shadows that many others reported. I was surprised at how slowly the darkness moved in.

Then in Fort Worth we had two minutes and twenty-four seconds of darkness. While others have reported the wind kicked up, I didn’t notice that. I did notice the quiet—no birds, no squirrels. It seemed forever, and in the midst of it I wondered what would happen if the lights forgot to come back on. But then the light came back, I thought more rapidly than it had left. Totality was at 1:40 and well before two o’clock we were back in full sunshine with those high clouds that let some people see the sun and made others along the path miss it. Later, I would see people describe that silent dark time as everything from holy to creepy. I was sort of in between—it made me think how everything in our world works together, and most of it for our benefit. We knew the light would come back. I read somewhere this week that those science deniers on the extreme right see themselves as forced to choose between their faith and God or science, and they choose faith. What’s sad is that they cannot reconcile the two in their minds. That’s what the dark moment was to me—a convergence of science and faith.

The mood across the country was much less solemn and more celebratory, with news programs showing people whooping and hollering, and it struck me as significant that when nature went silent, mankinwas at its noisiest. I’m not sure yet why the joy in the eclipse—was it science? Faith? Survival?

Then, of course, there was the whole Rapture business that got wrapped into the eclipse. A friend, who bemoaned that it had missed him again, helpfully advised that if you missed your rapture today, you can catch another in 18 months. But if you miss that, it’s something like 350 years. In truth there are several total eclipses throughout the world each year, so I suppose rapture followers could just get the schedule and follow them-good excuse for travel. Some posts about the Rapture were hysterical—I saw someone who offered Rapture protection. Don’t want to be snatched up? Just call him, though I don’t know if his work was guaranteed or not. Another entrepreneur was offering pet care—if you are swept up in the Rapture, he will care for your pets (what? They can’t go with you?). Of course, his work was prepaid, no refunds. And there were several posts about leaving random clothes scattered around so it would look like you’d been raptured (does it required nudity? I’m shocked!)  My mystery mind can see several great plots around the Rapture—someone who wants to disappear can leave that clothing trail, or perhaps if you are into paranormal, someone is presumed to be raptured, until his or her body is found, the victim of murder.

A couple of serious notes: I hope we’ll hear about observatory studies of animals during the eclipse. A reporter in Fort Worth was assigned to zoo duty, studying the reaction of animals. That becomes a bit personal to me, because I’d been thinking about how I’d protect Sophie during the eclipse, though I had no idea if It would bother her or not. The thunderstorms predicted for later tonight would probably have bothered her more. Just one more thing to remind me of the hole in my heart.

Another serious note: if you want to recycle your eclipse glasses, there will be an eclipse in South America in August, and schoolchildren need glasses to be able to watch it. There’s a link on my Facebook page about how you can contribute your used glasses.

The excitement is over, and I for one am ready to move on. I was beginning to tire of the eclipse hype. So here’s to the rest of the week—may it be whatever you want it to be. In full sunshine!