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Sometimes you have to listen to your inner instincts. The small voice we hear that whispers, This way, follow me. For some of us, it is the voice of God. Others consider it their sixth sense. For me, it's a combination of both considering they are one and the same.
Fifteen years ago, I moved to Nashville following that voice. That’s the short and simple version of the story but it was that clear. Nashville. No other place on a map that was filled with many other places and options. I knew no one in the city, I didn't have any relatives in the area, and I didn't have a particular job. It was the city where I had to be. I’ve never regretted following that voice but never more than during the eclipse when the celestial heavens aligned.
While others across the nation had carefully plotted their path for many years, planning on where they would be during the eclipse, I lived obliviously. I was caught up in the daily rapture and apocalypse of my own life. It was only a few weeks prior to the eclipse that I actually realized it was headed my way. Or rather, that I was headed toward it. I began to feel a bit unsettled. I blamed it on the news and the rolling tide of my emotions. On deadlines or fatigue. On just being me—artistic, emotive, and passionate.
Plans were in the making all around me. All of them were huge events: major parties, concerts, radio broadcasts, and eclipse watching galas. Glasses sold out, were recalled, and sold out again. I never bought a pair. I bought Guinness. There was that small instinctual voice again. Alone, it whispered. So alone it would be. I would sit on my porch, wait with expectation, and experience the unknown of what would come.
I woke up Monday saying "Eclipse day!" as if it were Christmas morning. I was giddy: such a silly word but I felt silly, not melancholy. I worked on a short story about a woman waiting for the eclipse. The refrigerator man came to repair the fridge. I looked at my watch. I told him that the penumbra was coming and that he could take a Guinness with him.
My house is encircled by trees. Large Oaks of every kind, Elms, and Hickories. I love the light passing through the filter of their leaves, the sun on their bark, the fog that moves through their limbs in the early morning dawn. I have a relationship with these woods.
I sat on my tiny front porch, watched the shadows shifting forward, and cracked open a beer. There was the singing of cicadas and birds. Dogs barked in the distance, down the hill. It was the middle of the day but night was falling; the shadows lengthening. There was the slightest of breezes and I felt the coolness on my skin as the day gave pause and began to bow to the passing of the moon.
I watched this approaching night for the hours it unfolded and then at the speed of atoms splitting, totality crashed over me. It was as if the keys of a thousand doors were unlocked at once and forever, and it took my breath away. I whispered Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, not in fear or even in prayer, but in awe and wonder. A word of praise and thanksgiving to have lived in this moment in time, to have lived in the path of this happening, and to be experiencing it in such an immediate and profound way.
I stepped out into the opening beneath the dark sky where stars had appeared. Fireflies lit up the grass everywhere as if they had been standing by waiting for their orders to lift off. There are few moments in life this powerful and profound.
The day began to slide out from under the moon again, sweeping across the yard, shadows being chased away by light until the fullness of day returned. The sound of the crowd miles away at the Riverfront park erupted into cheers.
Later that afternoon, I watched the Nasa coverage, the interviews with people from all nations. This occurrence was so exciting: so breathtaking, so unifying.
The following day I was in Parnassus Books greeting customers who had traveled miles to be right where I was all along. Sharing stories of where they’d been and how they’d watched, one man from Texas looked at me and said: “Totality is everything.”
"Yes," I said.
“90 percent isn’t good enough,” he continued, adamant about this. He was preaching to the choir.
“No sir,” I said. “Its totality or nothing at all.”
Another couple had traveled from Tampa, Florida. The man told me that they had run from the clouds further up in Kentucky. They ended up pulling off of the interstate and watching from a field behind JC Penny. The woman said it was perfect. Her eyes were still filled with the same wonder that I had felt.
“An Indian man from New York and his family stood next to us,” he said, “and he watched the whole thing with his hand on his heart. He told me afterward that in his religion, this was a spiritual experience.” He smiled at me, tired from so many miles but so fulfilled. “I told him, buddy, in my religion it’s a spiritual experience too.”
Amen, brother.
Another man told me, “You know, for just a minute we all stopped fighting. It wasn’t about politics or arguing. We were all in the same place. Suddenly we were all on the same page.”
Eclipse books were on sale. People were buying them up. Opening to the pages for their next pilgrimage and marking the trajectory. “Argentina,” one woman told me, “I was born there and haven’t been back in 30 years but I’m going for this.”
I realize that the world has scoffers, people who fall into the category of "What is all the noise about? Big deal. Sun, moon, eclipse—I get it," and those that say, "Well, that was an interesting show, now let’s get back to business." But there’s another group. The ones who were deeply affected when those celestial bodies aligned, who felt an awakening of bold Illumination. I count myself among those.
In the midst of world events and acts of terror, of meetings at the United Nations, and our endless worrying about North Korea as we hatch up the possibilities of nuclear war, I cling to the recent memory of that totality. For a few minutes, we became one people, looking heavenward, eclipsed by the vastness of the universe. Our politics as small as those distant stars on the horizon—when all the pleasure and pain of simply being human traveling through this vast corridor of time was the greatest miracle of all.
