In August 20217, I drove to Alliance, Nebraska to witness the total eclipse of the sun. I saw the moon beginning to carve out the sun — making the sun look like a crescent moon! the day was completely clear and blue. then the light began to change. A slow and nuanced change. the light ebbed away more quickly such that it was gone fast. I looked up. where the sun had been there was now a black hole. Streaming away from the hole on all sides were wavering spikes of what looked like slowly-flickering lightning streaks. I did not have “eclipse glasses”. I did not want them. I experienced the event with my naked eyes. I glanced at the spectacle for two seconds at a time, then turned my gaze to see the sky around, now a deep lavender color on the horizon. Then I glanced another two seconds and so on. Inside my body, I had a fluttering feeling, a tingling sensation. Not my head but rather the inside of my body seemed to get dizzy. Beyond those physical reactions was something else: the intangible spirit inside me — which was in awe and felt humbled at a sight we never see: the sun’s tremendous halo of power and energy. the length of the eclipse was about two minutes but seemed much much longer because time seemed to slow down, stretch out. The event of Nature, of God, revealed itself on many levels; in different ways that even now as I write this (in my journal at the time) I am still reeling from the effects …. Then faster than it did for the light to disappear it reappeared, quickly, in mere moments. The sun was back to “normal” and so was the day. The sun which we take for granted, which revealed its most majestic moment, bathed us in light.
