By Scott Bennett
RICHMONDVILLE — It’s now early Friday morning March 14,th 2025. After midnight, but before dawn. The sky is clear. A great lunar spectacle has been prophesied: a lunar eclipse. Nothing esoteric here, no, just the keen measurements of astronomers. But no matter who you are or where you’re at, the great display holds a multitude of meanings.
This display is subtle and happens slowly, over the span of hours. We live in the age of the instant. Everything’s available on demand. But these events are cosmic, playing out over eons. They require a bit of cognitive deprogramming to really enjoy. What we see in the span of hours took time beyond reckoning, beyond any certain reckoning to manifest. Full stop. Take a moment to reflect.
While others have seen displays like it. None have ever seen this one. And once it’s gone, it’s gone forever, existing only in faulty memories and on recordings. These recordings and memories are mere reflections of the event like rippling images on a pond. Echoes of a thing so vast and grand and just mind-warpingly huge, and still temporary, still fleeting until it’s done. Until the pond is still again and our normal is restored.
As the event takes shape and the moon the color of blood I’m reminded of this notion: the temporary nature of existence. We have before us the science to understand the laws of the heavens and what great lessons we have learned. One lesson, in particular, puts things in perspective.
In the face of the cosmic we sit perched on a giant sphere tethered to another giant sphere all seemingly suspended on nothing in a sea of utter chaos. There’s a modicum of order, just enough so that we can exist. We don’t just exist, of course.
Like ants perched on a hill moving sand around we build. But we build mounds and structures and villages and towns and cities and civilizations. We build towering edifices to the sky! No more fingers pointing at the moon, we’ve gone that very moon and back again! To what end? Is it utter futility and meaninglessness? Maybe, maybe not. Like the ant, we persist.
Unlike the ant we have more tools at our disposal, more knowledge. We know just how precarious our position in the universe is. Yet, we seek a terra firma, when maybe, ultimately, there is no terra firma. Our precarious position depends on so many factors, so many fragile factors that must occur each day. The sunrise is not guaranteed. Yet we exist. In the face of all these odds and threats innumerable, we’re here.
Like winners of a universal lottery we exist. That odds defying existence we call life is enough to engender questions of the divine. I’m fortunate enough, dare I say, blessed enough to be able to sit in a backyard and stare up at this magnificent clear sky and witness a spectacle that makes me feel a part of something so awesome, even big words feel small.
Some say this spectacle is a harbinger of ill omens, bad times ahead. But that’s way above my pay-grade. As I look back up and see the show about to end, the moon reappears in the sky, and dawn is on its way. I begin to realize: though this moment is fleeting and there may be no tomorrow, there is today. There’s the here. There’s the now. Maybe that’s all the terra firma we get. Maybe that’s all the terra firma we need. But no matter how you look at it, it’s a gift, this thing we call the present.
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