Yesterday was the total solar eclipse, the astrological event that had people scurrying across the country to get in the Path of Totality. Yes, the pictures looked amazing, and I’m delighted for those who fulfilled a wish to experience it. I kept closer to home, choosing at the last minute to drive to the beach ten minutes down the road where people are known to gather to watch the sunset in warmer weather. For me, it was a social event more than anything on the grassy point in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, and I used it as an opportunity to connect.
As a photographer myself, I chatted up Sean, who was there with his camera and tripod hoping to capture the 96% eclipse. Turns out he had been in the radio business in Massachusetts, back when there were local radio news stations. Now he works for Cintas, the uniform company, and only has time to use his camera when not working 9 – 5 and driving his son to baseball games.
Groups, families, and couples sat on blankets and chairs, bundled in hats and coats, which were insufficient to keep us warm at the water’s edge, despite the earlier temperatures in the sixties. Kids ran around and kicked balls as the moon eased its way across the sun without our notice. I didn’t have glasses, but my neighbor blanket said I could borrow theirs, and to my surprise, I saw that the moon had already begun to cross the path of the sun. Another blanket neighbor had made a camera obscura, which they offered a glance into. A mother with three kids had also made one out of a long tube, which projected a much bigger crescent-shape onto the tube’s round end. The coolest projection of all was through the lens of a colander, which produced dozens of tiny crescents huddled in groups on the blanket below, much like the gathering on the lawn.
At one point, a woman came around offering official sun-gazing glasses, courtesy of NASA, her employer. Gazing directly at the sun is a rare experience in and of itself, and watching our little sister eclipse its mighty parent was a strange juxtaposition. The miniscule eclipsing the G A R G A N T U A N was a powerful metaphor for what’s possible when things are in Right Alignment.
Generosity, kindness, and connection ruled the afternoon in a spirit of open-hearted communion as we all faced the mighty sun with varying degrees of awe, wonder, and perhaps a bit of reverence for the source of light, energy, and life on the planet we all call home. Whether everyone felt the connection that our cosmic neighbors were inviting us into I don’t know, but I felt it. It stirred me into a state of appreciation for being alive at this moment—a state of connected presence.
As I drove home, I took it all with me, back into my solitary life in a box, the one created by the hands and heads of man, the isolated spaces that both protect us and separate us, from nature and from one another—the totality and partiality of being, once again exposed to the light.
Surrender to the Abundance 