Sight Unseen / Brandon A. Evans

Under the crescent sun

There is a moment during a total solar eclipse when the slowly-building anticipation quickly changes into something that grabs your attention.

Without warning, the air cools, sounds become more acute, and the light becomes like a sharply dim veil thrown over houses, trees and fields.

It’s a moment of awe; a timid precursor to what is about to happen.

I certainly felt that awe during the 2017 eclipse, but I also felt something else.

As the sun waned ever more slender, I looked up through my telescope and something swept into my mind that was unwelcome and unexpected: fear.

A fear that was primal and deep-seated—that could not be strong-armed away but only tolerated as it passed through.

There in the sky above me—in the immeasurable movement of two celestial bodies—was a pure measure of absolute inevitability.

It’s a rare thing, that kind of certainty. In nearly everything we face in life there is some wiggle room. Miracles can happen, plans can change, health can improve. Even death bows to our belief in the life to come. The door is never fully closed on anything.

But this—this cosmic event—was suddenly exempt from the rules. The future had been written by the heavens and could not be changed. Something I’d wanted to see my whole life was going to happen, and I wasn’t sure I was ready.

My control was gone.

In that splitting moment, I wanted everything to stop, just for a bit. I wanted to enjoy that unearthly light for a little longer; to decide when I was truly ready to get on with the show.

I forget who originally referred to this desire—C.S. Lewis or Peter Kreeft perhaps—but they called it something akin to the rewinding or pausing of a tape: the urge to capture and keep—to control—a moment in time. To be able to play it in full at our command, to hold it still when we wished, or to shelve it altogether for another day.

That is what I wanted at a base and subliminal level, silly as it was: to control the sun and the moon.

That instinct, and the weight of what it meant, passed in seconds. I let it go because I had to. Something greater was waiting.

But a moment like it will come again: not just for me, but for all of us.

In death, we find the ultimate certainty—one that Jesus Christ himself could not avoid despite the most bitter of prayers.

Even assuming we carry the hope of salvation and—by grace—a life lived in love, what will our reaction be when we stand eye-to-eye with the Lord?

As for myself, I think I’ll want to look away from him, even if just for a flickering instant. His gaze, after all, is final. There’s no more wiggle room after that. No more secrets, no more holding back.

No more control.

To be pulled from this world into another—even if by a gentle hand, even if it’s into heaven—will come with some resistance from many of us. Such a final surrender to the inevitable betrays our fallen nature.

It’s why there’s a purgatory.

And it’s part of the reason we all fear death. We’re not ready to let go. Ultimately—just like an eclipse—it won’t be in our power to stop nor will we, in hindsight, have wanted to stop it.

We are all standing under the light of our own crescent sun. The day will come when that light closes into darkness. But before it does, the question we face is not whether goodness and beauty will dawn anew for us, but how easily we will let them.
 

(Sight Unseen is an occasional column that explores God and the world. Brandon A. Evans is the online editor and graphic designer of The Criterion and a member of St. Susanna Parish in Plainfield.)†