New Nonfiction + Totality’s Temperature Drop
April 2024: A letter for people who aren't tired of eclipse content yet.
Dear family, friends, and Internet strangers,
March and April are busy for me this year, so I’m keeping this letter brief and simple.
Ed and I got to watch the so-called Great American Eclipse locally with a couple of out-of-town visitors, as Indianapolis was in the path of totality.
We had a warm, clear day, and we stood around in the sun pulling out our eclipse glasses every so often to check on the progress of the moon. Usually, if I’m standing around in the sun, I’m hoping the sun will go away; for once, all my hopes were guaranteed, and on a nearly cloudless day—something else I rarely hope for. (A high UV index is not my favorite thing.)
Ed and I saw the partial eclipse in 2017, and this one looked about the same as I remembered until moments before totality. At that point, the sky and our surroundings got dramatically darker, the horizon looked like twilight, and when the moon completely covered the sun, we could take off the glasses and see the sun’s corona unfiltered.
The view of totality (including some solar prominences, which appeared as little magenta dots around the moon) was cool, but it was the darkness and the dramatic temperature drop that left the impression on me. I went from “hmm, wearing long jeans might have been a poor choice” to “I wish I had a jacket” over the course of less than an hour. “I take the sun for granted,” I thought. I felt small. A few minutes without sun changed so many things while it was dark.
There’s nothing about a planet having a moon that guarantees a solar eclipse. On Mars, Phobos and Deimos are too small to ever totally eclipse the sun.
I believe God had a specific idea in mind when designing this moon-Earth-sun combination, and total eclipses were intentional in His design.
If I’d lived before eclipses were predictable, and this happened without warning, what would I have thought? Would I have understood it was the moon? Would I have been reminded that even the sun, something I think of as reliable, is out of my control?
Even in the darkness, the part we get so excited to see is the light that’s usually hidden, like the corona and these jewel-like prominences.
I considered trying to write a longer letter that leans into a metaphor for the Christian life, but I don’t have the capacity right now to make it profound and not trite or cheesy. Instead, at least for those of you who are also believers, simply consider:
A 99% eclipse is not the same as totality, as I’ve read in various places, and it’s not “close enough” but is a shadow of the full thing. In the Christian life, following Jesus 99% is not the same as following Him 100% and is noticeably not the same.
Even a short amount of time without the Light of Life can make a difference, whether because a person turns away from the Lord or because God creates a season of apparent silence. We believers can sometimes take the Son for granted; He will not leave us, but we might let Him be eclipsed by smaller things.
This eclipse photo is from our friend Christine, who enjoyed the drama of totality from Texas. She’s been working on legit astrophotography and I’m grateful I get to share her fabulous shot with you all.
And this second image is from my phone. It’s not a good photo, but it’s mine!
May you witness something uniquely beautiful soon, and see something familiar afresh.
Writing Updates
I’ve mostly been editing this month, rather than working on my own writing.
The guest post I was hired to write for Elevate Design Co. is now up! Enjoy it here: “Art and the Church: Bringing Beauty and Hope”, 12 April 2024.
Repost: A 2020 Easter poem
I shared this one last year, and I’m sharing it again for the same reasons.
During Easter weekend 2020, I wrote a poem to process the odd silence of the holiday while in lockdown. All the cultural norms had disappeared, and my attempts to save some version of those things for myself, like trying to make deviled eggs, didn’t turn out, either. There was nothing left but the Gospel truth: the tomb was, and remains, empty.
I like to revisit this poem from time to time, especially at this time of year, and I thought I’d share it with you.
Resurrection Sunday
It’s not about egg hunts canceled by the rain and this long pandemic, nor about the deviled eggs that I made all wrong, nor the ham we won’t be eating, nor the fancy dresses made for gathering in front of acquaintances, nor people in bunny suits (the rabbit kind or the clean room kind), nor flowers of any kind including the Kingsblood tulips that failed to come up for who knows what reason.
That’s it for this April! If any of this was valuable to you—interesting, useful, or beautiful—share it with someone:
To truth, love, and adventure,
Rae
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