I was preparing to live this rare experience with my students in Laval. Right next to the whole hidden sun, I know, but I wanted to be with them. There were some absences, of course, but you see, some wanted to be with their teacher, with their friends at school especially, on the threshold of totality.
My phone made a little sound, a researcher asked me to come and give a philosophical reflection on all this on the radio within the hour. I said, “No, I’m going to go to my students, I need them right now.” » Much more than they needed me. A philosophical reflection, in any case, comes so much better afterwards. This is the whole tragedy of this discipline which is mine, but it is also its patience, its slowness, its meaning, just as it is ours. The moment is too strong, the thought only exists the day after the big evening, in broad daylight.
I needed them so much on Monday. Need the one who came back from his experience outside saying: “Ugh, normal. » Because I remembered that, a few days earlier, he had told the class about the immeasurable grief he was experiencing. I needed the one who didn’t have glasses to lend her mine. I also needed the one who completely refused to go outside or look out the window, as if frozen by something I didn’t understand. I didn’t insist. And I craved this discussion with the excited student who always sits in the back, who came up to me around 5 p.m. to ask me what I thought about all that. Because some had been disappointed, she told me. How fascinating it was to me, this disappointment, while I myself was recovering from my emotions, each one as exalted as the last.
I spoke to him about this need to be together, as I heard him often the next day. I also told him about this rare experience of everyone looking at the sky together, fascinated. I finally spoke to him about this awareness, empirical and not theoretical, of the fact that all this is moving above our heads, but above all that all this is moving without our having anything to do with it.
In the words of Charles Tisseyre a few hours later: we must rise up. We are witnesses. He then made the link with science, and the necessary astronomical curiosity that must be cultivated, that goes without saying. Not understanding the stars is like wanting to spend your life staring at your feet. But he began with spiritual words: elevation, testimony.
In the words of David Saint-Jacques the next day, it was a spiritual experience. Those were the first words that came out of his mouth, and it was no accident. He repeated the term later in the interview, after having also, obviously, praised the democratization of astronomy.
And suddenly it became loud and clear. Totally. We had a spiritual and scientific experience at the same time. The bridge between the two was made through the community aspect of everything. It is this feeling of community that ensured that reason and emotion were able to meet. Indeed, wonder is this vibration at the source of religiosity as well as scientificity.
On Monday, Quebecers recognized their deep belonging to a pagan, post-Catholic, free and nature-oriented spirituality. Looking towards the sky.
First for those few minutes, then in the hours that followed, we didn’t take the sky for granted. Let’s make this gratitude last. Since most of the time we take for granted that the sky is there.
But we belong to heaven. This sentence is not a metaphor, it is a scientific reality. We float in the sky, it encompasses us, and during this special day of April 8, 2024, Quebecers earned their belonging to the heavens by giving them thanks.
We were no longer on the edge of something, waiting for the big night, we were living it. We were no longer on the threshold of totality: we belonged to it completely.