A Total Eclipse of the Heart

I wonder… Jennifer Grant shares just how good wonder is for us.

Elisa

A Total Eclipse of the Heart

By Jennifer Grant

I’m writing this in August, and my phone has been lighting up all week with messages about, and pictures of, the solar eclipse. From London, my daughter texted, surrounded by neighbors wearing those tell-tale paper glasses, “Community is alive and well here on the streets of Peckham.” A friend in Spain sent a picture of the “ring of fire” as the sun disappeared behind the moon. “No words can capture the feeling,” he wrote. Another sent a photo that looked like a crescent moon on a cloudy night. “A few minutes after totality...and this is the SUN!”

“Ah, why can’t we be in Europe,” my husband, David, sighed. He’s an eclipse enthusiast, and we’ve seen two, but this time were nowhere near the path of totality.

In April 2024, however, we drove from Chicago to Fishers, Indiana, a suburb of Indianapolis. David had learned that totality would occur directly over Fishers around 3 p.m. We packed a Greek salad, two sandwiches, some snacks, and the same flimsy cardboard safety glasses we’d bought years earlier, the first time we’d chased down an eclipse. In Fishers, we set up our camp chairs beside a public park already filling with others.

It was a fraught time in our country that Spring, and we were in the thick of what has since become the new normal, here and abroad, with politics brutally dividing us. The parking lot in Fishers bore it out. Bumper stickers, representing different ideologies, barked crude insults at passers-by.

We found a secluded spot and set up our picnic. An hour or so later, the air cooled, the sky dimmed, birds fell silent, and, in the quiet, we heard the low, haunting call of an owl. Just before totality when the moon drew its cloak over the sun, everything turned silver, like an antique, ghostly daguerreotype. A midnight blue sky was pierced by a single point of light: Venus, or maybe Jupiter, standing by. Everyone in the park sat reverently, staring up at the sky behind our silly glasses. David whispered, “Whoa.” Some people clapped. Others, after a moment, cheered. Then the sky began to lighten again.

After a while, we folded our chairs and walked back to the lot, this time in much closer proximity to strangers. The air had changed, and we found ourselves reaching for words to connect with people we didn’t know. “Wow, right?” “The way it got so chilly…” “Did you hear that owl?”

An eclipse alters our perceptions, making us take notice that we’re spinning through space. It underscores something we, daily, take for granted: the effect that star closest to us has on our experience of reality. It reminds us where, precisely, we are as our moon and a burning ball of gas align before our eyes. And, somehow, if only for a moment, it can make strangers feel like neighbors. As my daughter wrote, “Community is alive and well.” Whatever had divided us an hour earlier seems, for the moment, mercifully beside the point. What is left, under the familiar light of the sun, is simply wonder.

Wonder is good for us. Experiencing awe and wonder is shown to lower stress, sharpen the brain, and draw us closer to one another. It can also reawaken our faith. Psalm 19 says the heavens are telling the glory of God, and during an eclipse, the sky tells us something, too. It doesn’t erase our differences so much as make them, briefly, beside the point. Somehow it is reassuring to feel both very small and yet significant, all at once.

Back in the car that day, David and I folded up our paper glasses and slid them into the glove compartment. Later, I'd return them to the drawer in our bedroom, ready for next time.

Photos from 2024 ecslipe.

Jennifer Grant is an author and editor in Chicago, known for her work at the intersection of nature, faith, and everyday awe. Her latest picture book for children, Consider the Night Sky, is the third installment in her award-winning “Consider” series, published by Eerdmans Books for Young Readers. Find her on Instagram @jennifergrantwriter. More at jennifergrant.com.