Post by Rabbi Neil on Aug 25, 2017 21:03:27 GMT
It may have been a year ago, perhaps two, that I gave a sermon about being in the moment. I felt it necessary to deliver the sermon after leading a funeral and having the grandchildren continually film it. I was frustrated because I wanted them to remember it with their brains, not to witness the event through technology. Ironically, I forgot that it was a baby blessing on the day I would be delivering the sermon, and one of the grandparents spent the entire ceremony filming and using flash photography from their camera phone. It only proved my point even more.
On Monday, our family schlepped – and schlepped really is the appropriate word – through hours of traffic, hotels with bed bugs and then more hours of traffic to see a total solar eclipse. There are three natural phenomena that are on my bucket list – aurora borealis, a tornado and a total solar eclipse. Scotland, where I studied Astrophysics, was a particularly good place to see the northern lights, the first on my bucket list. The one evening that there was a stunning display, I was inside watching an Arsenal football match on TV and people came running in saying there were lights in the sky and it was aliens. I assumed it was university students just being stupid, until my lecturer came in the next morning to ask who had seen the best display in years? But I had been so glued to the TV, to technology, that I had no idea it was happening. Twenty years on, I’ve moved far closer to the equator and have basically ended any chances of seeing it. A tornado, that’s another thing, although every friend who has seen one basically says I’m insane for wanting to see that and that it is a truly terrifying and dangerous thing. I can’t help it – I’ve always wanted to see one, even since I was a young boy. But a total solar eclipse is the easiest of these to see because it’s totally predictable, to the second.
I knew that where we were totality would last just over 2 minutes. I was trying to get north another 15 miles to add 20 seconds to that but after 5 solid hours of driving that morning alone, we had to stop and set things up. I didn’t want to rush. I had a plan to set a timer which would allow me to really monitor how much time I would have left. I set up the camera and the large telescope that we have, and we started viewing the eclipse. With minutes to go until totally, the excitement built, the sky got darker, crickets started chirping and then it was suddenly on us. A big, black hole in front of the sun, something I’ve never seen before. I raced to the telescope and removed the sun filter. I looked through and it was wonderful. Beautiful filaments of light pouring off the Sun, something I had never seen before. I started to take photographs through the telescope with Jenny’s iPhone and also using the camera I had set up on a tripod. I made sure that Jenny and both of the kids looked through. I took more photos. A man nearby asked if he could look through the telescope. I looked up while he did and stared in amazement at the view. Then I took more photos, I looked through the telescope again once the man had moved, I noticed the Sun was starting to come through, someone said “It’s ending,” I took a photo, looked up and it was done. Our two minutes was over much, much quicker than I had realised. I had forgotten to set the timer.
I gathered the family together, led a blessing, and then we made a pinhole camera to show the kids the rest of the eclipse. There’s no question that of the two-minute eclipse, I spent perhaps half of it looking at totality itself, mainly through the telescope. It was a staggering view, but as it finished, I realised it lacked something. It’s taken me days to realise what it was. Friends who also watched the eclipse just with the naked eye and no telescope reported being overcome with emotion. Religious skeptics talked of awe, of a mystical experience, of being moved to tears. So, why was I not? Ever since I was a child I’ve wanted to see this, and I’m a Rabbi, so how was I not moved like they were? How was this not a spiritual moment for me? Part of the reason is because I was rushing to do so many things – the friends who all reported such profound experiences didn’t have kids with them. What I mean by that is not that it’s my kids’ fault, of course, but because I was thinking about them, not the eclipse. That’s what fathers should do, I don’t regret that. But I was so busy witnessing the event through the telescope and making sure that I recorded it on film that, for the first time in a long time, I was back to being an Astrophysicist. I was observing and recording a natural phenomenon. I was gathering and storing data. I forgot about the very thing I said in my sermon that while ago, just be in the moment.
I’m extremely pleased with my photos – I’ve never taken photos like that. But what I missed was the moment of humanity, the moment of awe, the moment of what Abraham Joshua Heschel would call “radical amazement.” I was amazed – looking through the telescope and seeing the solar loops thousands of miles long of burning plasma with my own eyes, while no-one with the naked eye could see that, was amazing. But it turns out that amazing through a telescope is actually profoundly different to amazing with the naked eye. I’ve seen the ice caps on Mars, I’ve seen the rings around Saturn, I’ve seen the stripes on Jupiter, all through a telescope, all extraordinary views. But when you’re looking through a telescope, it’s just you and the thing you’re observing. It’s isolating, as glorious as it may be.
What it lacks, it turns out, are two things – humanity and grounding. It was lovely to share the experience with my family, but I didn’t truly share the experience with my family. What I should have done is just stood there for a moment with them, perhaps arm in arm. Just us with a wonder of the universe. No photos, no telescope, just us as human beings sharing an experience. That leads into the second thing – grounding. What makes an eclipse so extraordinary is that is interrupts our usual life on earth. I was so busy witnessing it as an astronomer through a telescope that I didn’t witness it fully as an earthling. I didn’t fully witness the spectacle as I would normally witness it.
So, I want to amend my thoughts from my previous sermon on the use of technology during memorable moments. I think it has a place – I would definitely never have seen the Sun’s corona in so much glorious detail without it. But, in every special moment, we need to also take time to just be, to witness how the event has interrupted our usual life and, most importantly, to share that experience together, and not through a lens. The view will not be as good, but it will be memorable and moving in a different way – transcendence is not normally associated with a viewfinder on a telescope. A balance is needed, then. We obviously need technology. I typed and then printed out this sermon, you can hear my because of the microphone, people at home can see the service because of the camera and the ability to broadcast, most of us drove here in cars. Technology adds to our lives – some people here today wouldn’t even be here were it not for technology and modern medicine. But there needs to be a balance. We can’t be luddites and condemn all technology but we need to find a balance between using technology for spiritual purposes and also between setting it aside. I don’t think I got that balance right this time. Thankfully, though, eclipses are easy to predict, so we can go a forthcoming one, although getting my family to Argentina in 2019 or Antarctica in 2021 may be a challenge. Still, I’ll have 7 years to prepare until Texas in 2024. Maybe next time instead of preparing my telescope and camera, I’ll prepare my soul.
The universe is an extraordinary place and we are gifted with amazing opportunities to be present in its wonder. Sometimes those moments of wonder go by all too fast, and our responsibility as human beings, and especially as Jews, is to ensure that we never miss those moment. Baruch atah adonai, oseh ma’asei v’reishit, blessed are You, our Eternal God, who makes the wonders of creation.
On Monday, our family schlepped – and schlepped really is the appropriate word – through hours of traffic, hotels with bed bugs and then more hours of traffic to see a total solar eclipse. There are three natural phenomena that are on my bucket list – aurora borealis, a tornado and a total solar eclipse. Scotland, where I studied Astrophysics, was a particularly good place to see the northern lights, the first on my bucket list. The one evening that there was a stunning display, I was inside watching an Arsenal football match on TV and people came running in saying there were lights in the sky and it was aliens. I assumed it was university students just being stupid, until my lecturer came in the next morning to ask who had seen the best display in years? But I had been so glued to the TV, to technology, that I had no idea it was happening. Twenty years on, I’ve moved far closer to the equator and have basically ended any chances of seeing it. A tornado, that’s another thing, although every friend who has seen one basically says I’m insane for wanting to see that and that it is a truly terrifying and dangerous thing. I can’t help it – I’ve always wanted to see one, even since I was a young boy. But a total solar eclipse is the easiest of these to see because it’s totally predictable, to the second.
I knew that where we were totality would last just over 2 minutes. I was trying to get north another 15 miles to add 20 seconds to that but after 5 solid hours of driving that morning alone, we had to stop and set things up. I didn’t want to rush. I had a plan to set a timer which would allow me to really monitor how much time I would have left. I set up the camera and the large telescope that we have, and we started viewing the eclipse. With minutes to go until totally, the excitement built, the sky got darker, crickets started chirping and then it was suddenly on us. A big, black hole in front of the sun, something I’ve never seen before. I raced to the telescope and removed the sun filter. I looked through and it was wonderful. Beautiful filaments of light pouring off the Sun, something I had never seen before. I started to take photographs through the telescope with Jenny’s iPhone and also using the camera I had set up on a tripod. I made sure that Jenny and both of the kids looked through. I took more photos. A man nearby asked if he could look through the telescope. I looked up while he did and stared in amazement at the view. Then I took more photos, I looked through the telescope again once the man had moved, I noticed the Sun was starting to come through, someone said “It’s ending,” I took a photo, looked up and it was done. Our two minutes was over much, much quicker than I had realised. I had forgotten to set the timer.
I gathered the family together, led a blessing, and then we made a pinhole camera to show the kids the rest of the eclipse. There’s no question that of the two-minute eclipse, I spent perhaps half of it looking at totality itself, mainly through the telescope. It was a staggering view, but as it finished, I realised it lacked something. It’s taken me days to realise what it was. Friends who also watched the eclipse just with the naked eye and no telescope reported being overcome with emotion. Religious skeptics talked of awe, of a mystical experience, of being moved to tears. So, why was I not? Ever since I was a child I’ve wanted to see this, and I’m a Rabbi, so how was I not moved like they were? How was this not a spiritual moment for me? Part of the reason is because I was rushing to do so many things – the friends who all reported such profound experiences didn’t have kids with them. What I mean by that is not that it’s my kids’ fault, of course, but because I was thinking about them, not the eclipse. That’s what fathers should do, I don’t regret that. But I was so busy witnessing the event through the telescope and making sure that I recorded it on film that, for the first time in a long time, I was back to being an Astrophysicist. I was observing and recording a natural phenomenon. I was gathering and storing data. I forgot about the very thing I said in my sermon that while ago, just be in the moment.
I’m extremely pleased with my photos – I’ve never taken photos like that. But what I missed was the moment of humanity, the moment of awe, the moment of what Abraham Joshua Heschel would call “radical amazement.” I was amazed – looking through the telescope and seeing the solar loops thousands of miles long of burning plasma with my own eyes, while no-one with the naked eye could see that, was amazing. But it turns out that amazing through a telescope is actually profoundly different to amazing with the naked eye. I’ve seen the ice caps on Mars, I’ve seen the rings around Saturn, I’ve seen the stripes on Jupiter, all through a telescope, all extraordinary views. But when you’re looking through a telescope, it’s just you and the thing you’re observing. It’s isolating, as glorious as it may be.
What it lacks, it turns out, are two things – humanity and grounding. It was lovely to share the experience with my family, but I didn’t truly share the experience with my family. What I should have done is just stood there for a moment with them, perhaps arm in arm. Just us with a wonder of the universe. No photos, no telescope, just us as human beings sharing an experience. That leads into the second thing – grounding. What makes an eclipse so extraordinary is that is interrupts our usual life on earth. I was so busy witnessing it as an astronomer through a telescope that I didn’t witness it fully as an earthling. I didn’t fully witness the spectacle as I would normally witness it.
So, I want to amend my thoughts from my previous sermon on the use of technology during memorable moments. I think it has a place – I would definitely never have seen the Sun’s corona in so much glorious detail without it. But, in every special moment, we need to also take time to just be, to witness how the event has interrupted our usual life and, most importantly, to share that experience together, and not through a lens. The view will not be as good, but it will be memorable and moving in a different way – transcendence is not normally associated with a viewfinder on a telescope. A balance is needed, then. We obviously need technology. I typed and then printed out this sermon, you can hear my because of the microphone, people at home can see the service because of the camera and the ability to broadcast, most of us drove here in cars. Technology adds to our lives – some people here today wouldn’t even be here were it not for technology and modern medicine. But there needs to be a balance. We can’t be luddites and condemn all technology but we need to find a balance between using technology for spiritual purposes and also between setting it aside. I don’t think I got that balance right this time. Thankfully, though, eclipses are easy to predict, so we can go a forthcoming one, although getting my family to Argentina in 2019 or Antarctica in 2021 may be a challenge. Still, I’ll have 7 years to prepare until Texas in 2024. Maybe next time instead of preparing my telescope and camera, I’ll prepare my soul.
The universe is an extraordinary place and we are gifted with amazing opportunities to be present in its wonder. Sometimes those moments of wonder go by all too fast, and our responsibility as human beings, and especially as Jews, is to ensure that we never miss those moment. Baruch atah adonai, oseh ma’asei v’reishit, blessed are You, our Eternal God, who makes the wonders of creation.
