Analemma

My home-office window faces east. I like tracking the north/south migration of the sun through it over the course of the year. It is an awesome experience to remember that months ago, as I sat working early morning, the sky was dark. Not even the earliest rays of dawn broke the loosening strands of night. And when the sun finally deigned to make its appearance, it rose behind my back, over my left shoulder, and stayed low on the horizon.

But today, the morning is already bright, the sunlight brushing the tops of the trees in my neighbor's yard. Sunlight is peeking into my living room, off to my right, which has a northern exposure. I cannot even see the sun from my office window (an extension of the house hides it). It will be a few hours before the sun makes its way far enough south to shine on me.

We all know this phenomenon, but it was only recently that I learned of the extraordinary path the sun traces in the sky as it makes it annual trek. The sun does not, as I imagined, follow a single arc, north and south, retracing its steps as it reverses direction. Rather, for reasons that are quite beyond me (though you can find lots of friendly explanations on the web that lull you in to a meadow of understanding for the first few paragraphs and then abruptly thrust you into a forest of confusion, with numbers and concepts that darken the mind; well, my mind at least), the sun traces a route that looks like a lop-sided figure-eight.

The image at the top of this post is a year-long, time-lapse photograph, showing the annual path the sun. It is called an analemma. The shape never ceases to amaze me. Yet for the very first time, this year, just today, it conjured up something new in my mind. This year, it looks to me like a ribbon tied up in a bow. It is as if the whole earth were a present, with the sky its wrapping, and the sun the bow that ties it all together. It is as if a celestial being so treasured and cherished us, and the world we live and depend upon, that we all have been made into a gift. Everyone of us, all together, on this planet which is our home.

This question then calls to us: a gift to whom, from whom, for what purpose? I guess that is the mystery we are here to discover.