Stavanger in a Time of Innocence:
Thoughts on the Eclipse
I watched the eclipse over Stavanger last night. Wow.
My wife and I went down to Troon beach, hoping to witness it ourselves, but heavy cloud robbed us of the view. Yet perhaps because I could not see it with my own eyes, watching that celestial wonder unfold over Norway stirred something even deeper in me.
I became intensely nostalgic. What a beautiful gift you were given. I wished I could have been there. The last eclipse was August, 1999 and I knew exactly where I was.
It seems half a lifetime ago now, and yet Stavanger in Norway still holds some part of me in its strong arms. Watching the eclipse, the years seemed suddenly to collapse, and I found myself returning to another evening, another sky in a cabin in Randaberg in Norway.
An evening opened before me like a colourful book. I stood watching the water breathe its slow, silver rhythm, staring across the distance towards home. Enigma’s Return to Innocence moved through the air—a song that felt, in that moment, like memory singing to itself.
And joy settled beside me, gentle as a hand upon the shoulder.
Then came the vision I have never quite forgotten: a great golden sphere, heavy with light, drifting across the vastness, as though the earth itself had released some ancient secret into the heavens.
Perhaps that is what such moments give us. Not merely beauty, but a sudden awareness of our own existence within something immeasurably larger. For a few fleeting minutes, past and present touch. The person we were stands beside the person we have become. Distance disappears. Time loosens its grip.
And we realise that the places we have loved never entirely release us.
Last night, beneath the shadow of the moon, Norway reached across half a lifetime and held me again. But still, we are all children under the same stars with hopes of eternity and many other celestial wonders. John 3:16.
