Anchor
And I will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke. The Sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved. - Joel 2:29-32
Sea
Today is April 8, 2024. We are just a few hours from the Total Solar Eclipse. I was living in Atlanta for the last total solar eclipse visible in the U.S. This year, I happen to be in the path of totality again. God has been talking to me about April 8, as a date of significance since April 8, 2020, when I still lived in Atlanta. That day was Passover, and there happened to be a full moon.
On April 8, 2021, I was living in Corsicana, TX, and happened to be in the local observatory when I saw that on April 8, 2024, Corsicana would be in the path of totality for another solar eclipse. I knew it was Holy Spirit-odd that this day kept coming up for me. I’m still not sure what it means, but I know it is here!
So today’s newsletter is gonna focus on eclipses. I wrote this in 2016 before I had any idea I would witness two of these celestial occurrences in person. But this, I think, speaks to the periodicity of God’s revelations and signs. They orbit us in an ellipse. They circle our understanding, far away at first, and then sometimes they get closer. They get close enough eventually to shift the gravity, to pull the tides of our hearts, and tell us something. A glimmer, A shadow, A satellite. Then they are out of sight again.
I hope you see the beauty of God’s eclipse today wherever you are.
***
Sitting next to me is a college kid from the Midwest, sweet and chatty and returning to Duke after visiting his high school sweetheart. He asks me what I’m reading, and rather than explain about Chilean surrealists, I read him Pablo Neruda’s “Every Day You Play.”
I can tell he’s a bit embarrassed: a stranger reading him such a sexual poem on a public flight though no doubt he and his girlfriend only finished making love hours earlier. For some sex, will always be a private matter. But I’m struck by the format of Song of Songs, The Bible’s weird love poem—sandwiched between Ecclesiastes’ codex of despair and the greatest of the prophets— a book that’s borderline pornographic. Oral sex is definitely going down.
Surprisingly in the Bible, erotic love isn’t a two-person pastime. A third party is involved. There’s the Beloved and the Lover, and then there are the pesky friends who look on and praise the couple’s beauty. Is there always a third figure lurking in our intimacy? Is there always someone meant to look on at love or perhaps be conceived by love? Sex involving three instead of two?
Anyway, the college kid asks why I chose to read that particular poem. How do I explain that I am searching for incorruptible unity, a perfect metaphor, the intimate oneness of all things? Naturally, we get to talking about religion.
The kid says to me, “I’m not religious. I am studying to be an astrobiologist, but there is one thing that makes me suspicious, gives me a faint inkling that there must be One who laid the design. Out of billions of celestial satellites, out of billions of stars and planets and moons, only our Sun and only our Moon line up exactly, so that at the height of a full eclipse, the Moon covers exactly the circumference of the Sun. No more. No less. And what’s spectacular is that the viewing angle necessary to see that perfect alignment is only possible from Earth.
Out of billions, One. and Only one. No more, no less.
He says this, and I think, Wow, what a gift! Earthlings have exclusive tickets to see cosmic alignment— a sign of the perfect oneness of the universe. Thanks, God.
***
Weeks later, I am sitting in my loft on a rainy morning. It is dark, not yet dawn, and I am pondering God. And because I cannot understand any more than I do, because I do not reflect him perfectly, because I am a very small thing, and He, a very big one, I am fully eclipsed.
Oddly, at this moment, the Midwestern scientist enters my thoughts. He and his high school sweetheart and Pablo Neruda, and cherry trees in spring, and the uniqueness of our Solar Eclipse. And then God gives another gift.
Only our Sun and Moon line up exactly so that, at the height of a full eclipse, the Moon covers exactly the circumference of the Sun. No more. No less. The necessary viewing angle is only possible from Earth as if the eclipse was intended to be witnessed. Out of billions exists a singular perfection meant to be enjoyed and shared.
Sun-Moon-Earth. There it is, Trinity in alignment. The unity of the Father and Son is only visible to those living in the Spirit of Grace. We, Spirit-filled Earthlings, are onlookers, beholding the love happening within the Godhead. We are created in this (over)shadow(ing). The Son captures the Father’s light, all of it exactly. No more. No less. Perfect obedience. Perfect unity. A perfect metaphor.
Again, God becomes extravagant and ridiculously poetic. In that way, God is Someone I understand. He leaves breadcrumbs. He didn't just author existence. He makes our lives into poems.
I roll my eyes and laugh out loud. Dear Lord, Dear Lord, every day You play!
Verily,
Alysia Nicole Harris
Sail
“Every Day You Play....” - Pablo Neruda translated from the Spanish
Every day you play with the light of the universe. Subtle visitor, you arrive in the flower and the water, You are more than this white head that I hold tightly as a bunch of flowers, every day, between my hands. You are like nobody since I love you. Let me spread you out among yellow garlands. Who writes your name in letters of smoke among the stars of the south? Oh let me remember you as you were before you existed. Suddenly the wind howls and bangs at my shut window. The sky is a net crammed with shadowy fish. Here all the winds let go sooner or later, all of them. The rain takes off her clothes. The birds go by, fleeing. The wind. The wind. I alone can contend against the power of men. The storm whirls dark leaves and turns loose all the boats that were moored last night to the sky. You are here. Oh, you do not run away. You will answer me to the last cry. Curl round me as though you were frightened. Even so, a strange shadow once ran through your eyes. Now, now too, little one, you bring me honeysuckle, and even your ******* smell of it. While the sad wind goes slaughtering butterflies I love you, and my happiness bites the plum of your mouth. How you must have suffered getting accustomed to me, my savage, solitary soul, my name that sends them all running. So many times we have seen the morning star burn, kissing our eyes, and over our heads the grey light unwinds in turning fans. My words rained over you, stroking you. A long time I have loved the sunned mother-of-pearl of your body. Until I even believe that you own the universe. I will bring you happy flowers from the mountains, bluebells, dark hazels, and rustic baskets of kisses. I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.
We always try to find ways we can connect with God especially when our lives are so dire and busy he seem so far away then we get a peak of wonder from nature like the eclipse where he is present that he's love is all consuming and all extraordinary. I love how you find ways to commune with the creator through your writing and poetry its an art form of worship that is very beautiful. I believe when I write and try to study the Bible I'm a bit closer to him and yet at times it seems like I'm barely scratching the surface to really know who God is.
this was so beautiful to read.. definitely gonna chew on this today.