In the Shadows

I have never been one of those people who has understood astronomy, even though I have forever been fascinated by it. You might say that I am in the dark about most things astronomical.

We recently had a lunar eclipse. Many people say they know what a lunar eclipse is, but then struggle to explain what "it" is exactly, myself included. So here goes. Within a matter of minutes, the moon slips quietly into the earth's shadow and then back out again. For those of us who were willing to get up at an ungodly hour of the night, we were treated to a spectacular view of the cogs of our universe in action.

One important aspect of any eclipse relates to shadows. It isn't something that comes up in most conversations, but objects have two types of shadows: umbra and penumbra. Umbra is the complete shadow of an opaque body. This is where the light from the source of illumination is completely cut off. Penumbra is the partial shadow.

If you stand right smack behind something bigger than you that completely blocks the source of light, you would be in the darkest part of the shadow, the umbra. If you edge out just a ways, you are essentially half-in and half-out, or in the penumbra.

I know. On first read this may still be confusing. I felt the same way when the topic was introduced in my painting class. How is it that we do not learn about this in school? Or, perhaps I did and should be embarrassed that I, for one, failed to learn. When painting still lifes, we learn about these two types of shadows. Shadows and the contrast between light and dark are important, if not the most critical aspect of painting. Oddly enough, if you do shadows wrong, the painting will not look real. So, it seems that this lies somewhere in our understanding that is less than conscious, perhaps in the penumbra of our awareness.

To further describe the metaphor relating shadows to awareness, there are things we know (illuminated), there are things we know we don't know (penumbra) and then there are the things we do not even know that we don't know (umbra).

Another loose analogy also came to mind. We have a one year old puppy named Sophie. We try to keep track of her when she is outside so that she doesn't bark, eat twigs and rocks or dig up our yard. When she is outside, we can look out a window and sometimes, we see her. However, there is a "dark" side to the house where we cannot see her at all. This seems to be her spot. This is the umbra.

After a long winter, Sophie decided to go exploring into our neighbor's yard. Before the snow melted, her explorations were confined to a trail around the back yard tromped out in the deep snow. So, without a physical border of snow to keep her inside the yard, she has recently become more adventurous. Even though we have an electronic fence we often use a training collar instead to train her not to dig in the grass. Today, hiding in the umbra and not having the electronic fence collar on to warn her, she slipped over the line without our knowing.

My husband retrieved her after the neighbor called. We live close enough to a busy highway that our dog running loose is a frightening experience. Once inside the house we reprimanded her and gave her a time-out, which means she sits in her crate for a few minutes. As we were feeling all sorts of emotions, including anger, fear, sadness and relief, we talked about how long you stay mad at a dog. It seems that our consensus was that this should be only to the point where being mad no longer served its purpose. That point, however, was ill defined. There is no manual to guide us. It clearly would not extend beyond some number of minutes into hours.

And I wondered if we disregard this understanding with each other as humans. We stay angry and punish each other well past the point our anger serves any purpose. In fact, sometimes they are unaware of our anger. Or, as a result of our lingering anger they themselves become mad at us, confusing the issue. While we cannot rationalize with a dog and explain the implications of their actions and the emotional effects it has upon us, we can quite easily with each other, yet often choose not to.

So while we are in our deepest anger we remain inside our own umbra. Yet a few steps away we could come into the penumbra. The natural forces of our emotional universe are upset when we choose to hide behind the object of our anger unmovable. We do not slip into the penumbra, umbra and back out again as we see occur in the natural world. We hide behind the cause and force others into the darkness of our anger, setting off all manner of collisions.

While for today, this lesson may be learned and my awareness expanded, I am certain that the next time I am angry that things will become less clear once again and I will lose my way out of the umbra of my anger. I resolve to revisit the next eclipse so that the lesson may be repeated.

The lunar eclipse is different from other eclipses in that far more people can view the eclipse. All you have to be is on the night side of the earth and have a clear view of the moon. In other words, you just have to be in the dark. And, you just have to take the time to look out beyond yourself for a few precious minutes, sometimes when it may seem the most inconvenient. And then for a treasured moment, we remember how small we are in relation to the universe and how good it is to be human.