Shattered Lens

We stood on the sidewalk adjacent to our house as the light became a calm blue. The birds had been silent for well over thirty minutes as the kids flew between the house and the front yard, lifting the eclipse glasses to their eyes and praising the wonder unfolding before us in the heavens.

We were ready. We weren’t ready. We were a hot mess of grief and delight.

Just as the totality of the eclipse began, my mom’s camera tipped over as her travel tripod buckled under the weight of our layers emotions. After she took the shot above, the lens broke.

It reminds me of one of my favorite Hasidic stories. The great rabbi, the Baal Shem Tov,
asked his student, Rabbi Wolf, to prepare words of reflection before the blowing of the shofar. Rabbi Wolf carefully learned his reflections, and then wrote them on a slip of paper, which he kept in his breast pocket. But, without realizing it, Rabbi Wolf’s paper fell out of his pocket.

When it was time to blow the shofar, Rabbi Wolf looked for his slip of paper in vain. Then he tried to remember the words, but somehow he had forgotten everything. Tears rose to his eyes, and weeping, he announced the order of sounds. Tekiah, shevarim, teruah, tekiah gedolah! After the service, the Baal Shem Tov approached Rabbi Wolf, who looked at his teacher apologetically. The tears were still glistening in Rabbi Wolf’s eyes. There are may ways to open the gates of prayer, the Baal Shem Tov reassured his student, but genuine tears, and grief from the heart, are the most powerful.

What I realized on that day, and have so many times over the past month+ is that I am continuously looking through a shattered lens of grief. No art or practice will change this moment’s truth. No amount of busy-ness will create a short cut through the pain. But that doesn’t mean my heart is totally eclipsed as the shards lay at our feet, for love transcends time and space in so many mysterious ways. To show up with purpose and grace can be one of the hardest task before us–particularly with the growing darkness in our world today. And yet, when an expansive love/greater presence is felt amidst it all, the striving to have our frame perfectly in place to capture a moment in time fades away to reveal our full selves.

The lens shattered…and instead of cursing the ground, we looked up. We took off our flimsy glasses for a spell and soaked in the moment, unfiltered, breathless, letting go, suspended in time. Broken and whole.