A Sunday Short — Oct. 15
We were 80%-ers, still…
Sometimes, maybe most times, we forget to look up. In the ephemeral detail of earthly existence, with all its own beauty and devastation, with all that is creation and destruction from both the natural and human-made worlds, we get mired and stuck and lost there, most times, in the details that we think are all-important; the muck of daily life which we can only live with two feel planted on Mother Earth. Yet, still sometimes, maybe most times…
…we forget to look up.
Note: this, too, is metaphor!
Did you go outside yesterday and look up at 9:20am PDT? Did you know to? If you did, did you see it?
We did.
Here at Club Med Lenseigne Campus (closed for business for the time being btw), we were in the 80% band. AND…we had little hope of being able to see it given the prevailing weather forecasts. Living in the Great Pacific Northwest, so close to the Salish Sea, so close to the coast with its inherent “on-shore” flows, does not make for being a successful practicing practical astronomer. Only a hopeful one. And a lucky one when the universe offers a gift.
We were given a gift!
THIS is how we saw yesterdays eclipse here at Club Med L.C. A very safe way to see it. This was at its maximum—which is to say these were taken at 9:20am PDT. But here’s what’s cool and NOT lost on me: we knew the eclipse was coming; but from dawn until (and I kid you not because we were watching while we were waiting), 9:10am, we had overcast skies and no hope of seeing the eclipse. Sigh…se la vie. I am, after all, an amateur astronomer who lives at Club Med L.C.
And then the Universe gifted us. The clouds dissipated at a quarter past 9am. So we went outside and, with a little bit of physics and optics know-how, watched the eclipse in real time!!!
Synchronicity, nowadays, is never lost on me.
But, later, I realized something else. Something else we were looking at that was maybe more awe-inspiring and perhaps the real purpose (gift of synchronicity) of the clouds opening for us. Can you spot it in the pictures?
It’s also the metaphor.
Before I offer my interpretation, have another look at the pictures.
You see, we were in the 80% band of latitude respective to the “path of totality.” Because of our relative position on the Earth, whereas a few places were going to see the “total, annular” eclipse, we were only going to see the moon cover 80% of the sun. And that is what we “saw,” there, on the card, as the image was being projected through a pin-prick in a second card I was holding between the sun and that card in the photo.
But think about that. The moon was covering 80% of the sun—which is to say, only 20% of the sun’s rays, the sunlight, was hitting the Earth at precisely 9:20am PDT at Club Med L.C. So look at the pictures…. See it?
Get it?
Metaphor people! Everything’s a metaphor!
I was struck at how brilliant the light still is when only 20% of it reaches us. Look at everything else in those pictures. Shadows, so dark and distinct and cut clear; the bright, bright green of the grass speckled with autumn-colored leaves, and the arborvitae so bright and green as well; the sun on my hand just as bright at 20% as the clearest 100% day in July.
I continue to be awed by the things still yet to learn, or re-learn, or realize—all over again:
It takes so little light to light up the world.
That’s the learning—a 20% sun is still remarkable, still inspiring, amazingly enlightening.
It takes so little light to light up the world…
…in fact, it happens to be exactly the amount of light within each one of us.
And THAT’s the metaphor.
Always and Ubuntu,
~ k
PS: May you open your heart to let your light out, please; heaven knows we need it right now.
And no, it’s not lost on me this post turned out to be a bit of an homage to the last post. Weird, not intended but also not surprising. It’s both where and how I happen to be living right now—metaphorically people, metaphorically.
Everything’s a metaphor. Even the dark 80%.
Because even an eclipse cannot happen without the dark.
Amiright?