I invited my family to see the April 8 eclipse, and we found a place on a bay in the St. Lawrence River.
We had ourselves a grand little reunion up there on the Canadian border, and a great couple of days together. And we got to see a total eclipse, a first for each of us.
We had a dramatic view of the Moon’s shadow rolling in and out. Clouds came in just before the eclipse, dimming the Sun considerably and sometimes blocking it altogether, but we got a glimpse of the solar corona.
And seeing the moon’s Shadow move through the clouds was something I’ll never forget.
Venus is visible in the video below after the 3-minute mark.
We had about three minutes of totality.
It got cold! I had to get some long sleeves before totality, but went back to bare arms soon afterwards.
The sight of a blue shadow rolling toward us was eerie, thrilling, majestic, but beautiful most of all.
I think the local geese were going nuts. Or maybe they were asking themselves scientific questions and coming up empty. “You know, Lucy, I really shouldn’t have flunked out of those high-school science classes. Honk! Now it’s coming back to bite us in the butt! Honk!”
The two photos below were taken by my sister, Jenny Rosero. In both you can see Venus peeking through the clouds.
The photo below was taken by my mother, Cruz T. Rosero. You can see the world beyond the edge of the shadow, filled with light, still in the distance.
This time-lapse by Maddie Rosero shows the edge of the shadow rolling over us as the light came back.
Visual and spiritual wonder
Some takeaways, starting with the most basic.
Nothing is more predictable than celestial motions, and nothing less predictable than clouds.
Totality is much darker than you see in virtually all pictures and videos, including ours. When I turned around to film the people and houses on the shore, everything was clear in my video, but the shore was almost pitch-black to my eyes.
The word “eclipse” makes us think of one event — the disappearance of the Sun in this rare manner — but its reappearance in this manner is equally unique.
The darkness comes first and is brief; the light comes second, as it resumes its course.
My sister felt the event as a kind of cleansing of the world, nonviolent and renewing.
My mother reflected on dark nights of the soul that each of us eventually undergoes; she said we are all on a common walk toward our shared eclipse (death), one that we must walk together.
My wife Dess, commenting on the clouds that obscured our vision, said that they could illustrate all the ways in which our best vision of reality and the divine is too often obscured.
That reminded me of St. Paul’s statement that, for now, we see as “through a glass, darkly,” but one day we will see “face to face” (1 Cor 13:12).
For Dess, the eclipse was not finished after totality. She continued watching it closely and meditatively through the partial closing phase; she spoke later of an event that gradually unfolded through stages. And I think this is very much in contrast with the prevailing culture that is always seeking for the perfect single photograph, video, or moment.
St. Luke may be describing an eclipse on Good Friday; it’s debatable. But if he is, he’s treating a solar eclipse in a way that was radically hopeful compared to the typical interpretation in the ancient world that eclipses, like comets, were harbingers of evil or general disaster.
(See also Milton, one of countless modern examples).
Luke speaks of the sun going dark on the day of Jesus’ crucifixion — a temporary darkness (Lk 23:44-45). If we take this to mean an eclipse, then St. Luke was associating an eclipse not with general disaster, but with one day of limited suffering — this pain does not fall on the general population — followed by the greatest and most joyful event in the history of the cosmos.