Activity is markedly increased in Carbondale today. Streets are blocked and vendors are out in full regalia. 50 thousand folks are here or on their way to join us in the last solar eclipse for 20 years. A member of Congress commented that God is sending his signs of displeasure with a recent earthquake. Ms. Greene includes her admonition for all to pray as the solar eclipse is coming on Monday and is a further sign of God’s wrath. I am not disputing that the ways of God are often difficult to understand…but earthquakes and solar eclipses we do understand.

I have heard on more occasions than I care to remember comments regarding the illnesses of our fellow human travelers as a clear sign of God’s displeasure. It becomes more curious when the person assigning blame on behalf of God is the one who is ill or encounters the vagaries of nature.

Now as we gaze through our eclipse glasses on Monday and marvel at the miracle before us, there are things we do not understand beyond our little blue planet.

Einstein told us regarding time, ‘in physics know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.’ ‘In other words, time is an illusion.’

‘Time appears to pass normally to a person in strong gravity, while a clock in weak gravity runs fast. While to the person in weak gravity, the clock appears to run normally, and the clock in strong gravity runs slowly. Time is slowing down and speeding up because of the relativistic way mass warps space and time.’

Scientists ask, ‘If time is relative, am I already dead?’

‘If there is no perception of time before we’re born or after we die, is the existence of time relative or absolute?’

So there is a lot that we do not know. We listen to political leaders who assure us they have a direct line to God and speak on his behalf. Their embarrassing archaic view of faith is pugilistic.

We will look to the sky on Monday as our ancestors and their ancestors before they did. Unified in our desire to be a part of something bigger than ourselves we seek to understand. War misogyny and marginalization have not succeded in enriching our understanding. We have been coned so often that it feels normal. We want our jailers to like us and love us. We desire to curry favor with the master as we work in the hold of the ship rowing to the destination that the Boss wants us to take him…as we look to the sky and realize that somehow we have missed the point and the vision…the purpose of our being…