I loved the lunar eclipse Sunday night. Even more, I loved the social media laments about how terrible the red “supermoon” looked in smartphone photos. Granted, there were some pretty fantastic photos making the rounds, but the horrible shots of a small, blurry white disc captured how I often feel, and a lament I often hear from The Behemoth writers. God and his world are so awesome! So much more awesome than I can express!
It reminds me of that often-quoted section from C. S. Lewis’s Reflections on the Psalms:
I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed. It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not to be able to tell anyone how good he is; to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in the ditch; to hear a good joke and find no one to share it with. … This is so even when our expressions are inadequate, as of course they usually are.
To me, the best eclipse photos were not the ones that perfectly captured the right reddish hue or the ones beautifully framed by earthly objects. On Sunday night, they were the ones that reminded me: Hey! There’s an eclipse right now! Go outside and look! On Monday morning, they were the ones that reminded me how fun it was.
That’s more or less what we’re trying to do with The Behemoth: God is amazing. His world is amazing. We’ll try to communicate that as beautifully as possible, but our real goal is to remind you what’s going on and to get you to go look.
