I had wanted a miracle. Not one of those miracles you have to explain or justify, but a hit-you-over-the-head, fall to your knees and praise the Lord Biblical one. The kind that makes witnesses, if not cover their eyes and pray to God, at least pause to reconsider things. Maybe reconsider everything. The kind of miracle that I’d never before seen.

And then it rained.

Standing on my metallic rooftop that morning, under the darkness of the ominous, ominous skies as lightning bolts made landfall in the city around me, I squinted to see the sun or, more exactly, the moon in front of the sun, now hidden high above the clouds and the rain and the dark. If I hadn’t known about the eclipse I never would have noticed, nor would anyone else have noticed.

The biggest one in five hundred years…

China is monotheistic. Its one true god is money. Don’t let the Buddha fool you – he’s really nothing more than a middleman…insurance bought with incense sticks. The eclipse should have, for its brief duration, been a wonder and sign – a testament to an awesome, incomprehensible power…something so much more than just paper and coin. Something to make the shopkeepers and the merchants and the high-rollers or would-be ones stop what they were doing and look up – at some sort of loss – in amazement.

Instead there was nothing…aside from the muttered complaints of those hoping for some excitement and diversion on an otherwise typical summer day.

But there was the rain. Lots of rain. When it had finally stopped, I went downstairs with my camera…I’m not sure why, there wasn’t anything to see…there hadn’t been all morning. The little road in front of my building had again been flooded and so I stood for a while stranded on the raised concrete landing, leaning on a wall and watching people wading past. Some trudged along indifferently, some enjoyed the feeling of the cool water splashing over their ankles. A torrential downpour. A heavy stillness afterwards. This storm, like so many others, had passed by without consequence.

I had sent one of my students a message that day to complain and commiserate. Her city was also in the direct path of this invisible eclipse. Later, I received a message from her in return. Had she seen anything? No. She hadn’t. It had been raining where she was, too. But, reading her words, she sounded happy and excited. She’d gone with her friends out into the storm to try to see. The fact that she hadn’t didn’t seem to matter.

She knew it was there.

Note: The events referred to in this essay occurred on or just after July 22, 2009 – the date of the total solar eclipse that cut a narrow path over much of Asia, and the longest one anticipated in China for the almost five hundred year period from 1814 to 2309.