By David Nixon, Revd Prebendary
Eclipses seem to be in the news at present. We have had the ‘real’ eclipse earlier in the month, and then more recently the death of Bonnie Tyler, and repeated soundings of her 1983 hit Total Eclipse of the Heart – bringing back all sort of memories for some of us.
For the solar eclipse, I was in the garden of a neighbour; and as I mentioned in a recent sermon, I was almost more interested in the wine and substantial nibbles than in the phenomenon in front of me. Periodically, there would be a cry, “Look how far it’s gone”, and we would don our eclipse glasses again and look up.
It was spectacular, and although not a total eclipse, more exciting than the 1999 version I had experienced in Plymouth, where it was very cloudy, but did become noticeably dark. Because of the almost cloudless sky, in 2026 you really could see the chunk bitten out of the sun by the moon’s passing.
I was particularly concerned with watching the news that evening, and I realised that it was not so much about seeing the actual eclipse again – a recording could not be better than the real thing – but in witnessing who else had experienced it and where. I sought confirmation that I had been part of something unique and special, much bigger than myself.
I wonder if the same thing could apply to those who wanted in some way to be part of Bonnie Tyler’s funeral. Her music had been special in their lives, and they wished to join with others who felt those same emotions, again an experience beyond themselves. Something similar happens at football matches; but it’s not always beneficent – think of the Nuremberg rallies in 1930s Germany. Human beings seem to have a need for this type of experience, but it can go either way.
Worship, at its best, follows the same trajectory in a positive direction, where we are taken up and out of ourselves, into the presence of God, alongside our neighbours. Communal transcendence is achieved through familiar ritual acts, through the engagement of the senses often in beautiful buildings with beautiful music, and with incense floating across the air, and for just a moment we touch the glory of God and are transformed by it.
But often this doesn’t happen. It may be that we don’t allow ourselves to be sufficiently open to God: our thoughts are too much with our laptops or phone screens; we are in our heads rather than in our guts, bellies and hearts. Or it could be that we pick up osmotically the sense of a Church too concerned with itself, an institutional narcissism which distracts from the outward search for the Divine.
Whatever it is, we can never manufacture transcendence. The best we can do is to give ourselves an optimal opportunity – an equivalent of queuing for eclipse glasses with which to view the sun safely: praying God quietly that we may receive the grace to be in God’s mystical presence, albeit for a moment, and giving thanks.