The Path of Totality - April 6 2024

 

The Path of Totality

April 6 2024

I am far from the path of totality.

Just celestial events, as usual;

sunrise, sunset,

a half moon

waxing to full.

Neither does the miraculous

happen here.

Just things

as they've always been;

a planet

that gave rise to life,

plants eating light,

and conscious animals

with ineffable minds

who ponder its meaning.

So nothing unlikely.

Nothing supernatural.

Nothing to get excited about.

Just the everyday miracles

we take for granted

in our busy humdrum lives.

Forgetting

that for us to be here

the succession of accidents

that had to happen

is more awe-inspiring than divine intervention,

an omnipotent God,

a celestial wave of the hand.

This time an eclipse

as the stars align

and a clockwork cosmos unfolds.

But what if next

it's an asteroid?

Not a shadow

that fits so perfectly

it must be heaven sent,

but rather a darkening

growing day-by-day

until it obliterates the sky?

Instead of looking up

at a ring of fire

around a black-as-black moon,

the apocalypse

coming at us

when watching is all we can do.

A total eclipse passing over the heart of North America is coming 2 days from this writing. Before science, these were miracles, portents, and sources of dread. Today, they're public events that rival the Superbowl, Fourth of July, and World Cup all rolled into one.

But I won’t be seeing it. So for me, nothing special will have happened that day. Which, of course, is wrong, because even if we take them for granted, there are miracles happening everyday. Every day is miraculous!

Of which, before anything else, is the incredible unlikelihood of this living planet on which we find ourselves. So many random turns of events in cosmological and geological history – let alone evolutionary history -- that could have gone so many ways, all but one of which were wrong. Nothing preordained; even though it can feel that way.

So why are we so impressed by the supernatural when it's so much more awe-inspiring to contemplate the real science? Superstition, and the religions it gives rise to, offer easy answers to hard questions: they don't plumb the mysteries and wonders, but simply wave it all into being. That life exists on earth — and self-aware intelligent life, at that (although the intelligence part is sometimes questionable!) — is so much more unlikely and miraculous than some celestial entity simply decreeing it so.