"When God began to create the heavens and the earth— the earth was without shape or form, it was dark over the deep sea, and God’s wind swept over the waters— God said, “Let there be light.” And so light appeared. God saw how good the light was. God separated the light from the darkness. God named the light Day and the darkness Night." Genesis 1:1-5 (Common English Bible)
"A Divided America Agrees on One Thing: The Eclipse was Awesome". New York Times, April 9, 2024
Yesterday my husband and I worked from home, and we wanted to take a walk sometime during the day. We decided to do it around the time of the eclipse. I made some pinholes in some cardboard, and grabbed a white envelope, so we could see the eclipse safely.
We started walking, and we enjoyed the sunshine of a pleasant spring day. We walked along the Fox River Trail by our house, and I kept pulling out my cardboard and checking against the envelope how the eclipse was progressing. We stopped by some park benches, and another women offered us an extra pair of eclipse sunglasses that she had been given. Total stranger. Such kindness.
I have to admit - looking at the eclipse through the glasses was much better than my pinhole-cardboard-envelope supplies. We sat together, sharing glasses, looking at the sun, enjoying the companionship of someone we didn't know, but unified in our awe of the moon passing over the sun. On the way home, we stopped by a new cultural center that had opened recently in our neighborhood. Tons of people had gathered on the patio, and the live feed from NASA was playing in the auditorium inside. I felt connected with people in Niagara Falls, NY through the video feed, and surrounded by neighbors I had never met.
In Genesis, we read about God separating light from dark, but yesterday, we saw how light and dark still play together as the heavenly bodies dance around the universe. More importantly, we saw how heavenly events bring bickering and isolated people together in ways that we never seem to manage on our own.
Why does it take the movement of the Sun and Moon to bring us together? Can't we be nice to each other on a normal day? Yes, we help out in disasters, but what about this afternoon? For no reason whatever, other than we are neighbors and we live near each other?
Let's hold onto this special event as a memory of how we can be nice to each other, and say hello to strangers, and see if we can manage to do this for more than the 4.5 minutes of a rare solar eclipse. Amen.
Pastor Anna-Lisa Hunter
April 9, 2024
A photo of the eclipse, taken over the stern of the Lee A Tregurtha ship on Lake Erie:
