For he who knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.

Psalm 103:14

I watched a total eclipse of the sun in the city of Vitoria in Northern Spain on the 12th August 2026 in what would be the most powerful, moving and profound experiences I’ve had for quite some time. I’ve struggled to put into words the feelings that caused me to actually cry for a minute or so afterwards but will do what I can here.

The sun was transformed into a black disc ringed by leaping flames for a few seconds in a display of ethereal - almost supernatural - beauty, what was once so familiar, so powerful, turned on its head. The last light of the sun was squeezed out bit by bit until nothing remained. The crowd of people gasped, cheered and hugged one another. Venus appeared low in the sky which had become blue like twilight. We all took off our glasses, looking directly at the sun with naked eyes. Then all too soon it ended, the crack of light returning and consuming the black disc and the sun roared back.

The physicality of our existence

A total eclipse exists because of cold coincidence due to the laws of gravity. A star forms from a gas cloud, ice and rocky debris gradually form into planets, those planets usually attract enough matter to form their own moons. Planets spin around the sun, moons spin around the planets. Our moon throws total eclipses our way in the way it does because it is just the right ratio of size and distance from the sun to just block it out for small sections of the planet every so often. If the moon were slightly larger they’d be common and almost routine, any smaller and we’d barely notice them.

A physical universe devoid of consciousness and humanity is a cold desolate place. How many eclipses have passed by when earth was a barren rock, how many with only single celled lifeforms to witness it. No, the light of a runaway nuclear explosion being briefly blocked could cause the somehow sentient products of ice and dust to feel joy and togetherness is something to be held on to.

Totality only lasts a few seconds from a fixed position on earth. The beauty, form and order of the event collapses and we return to normality. Like our own selves, a brief assembly of form, mind and love that comes together for too short a time before collapsing back into entropic disorder, all that physically makes us up scattering around the universe. But the beauty is not diminished by its brevity.

By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, Since from it you were taken. For dust you are and to dust you shall return.

Genesis 3:19

I truly do not see this as fatalistic or depressing. Whether you believe in God or not we do come from the dust, and we will return to it. The dust is us, the earth is us and even the universe is still us. There’s no separation.

The dust

The year of 2026 has been the worst I can remember for heat and drought in the UK. As a software engineer living an easy and cozy life it is all too easy to forget what I’ve just written. Seeing wildfires in the south of England has been shocking, as has the larger ones in the rest of Europe and across the world. While globally the year hasn’t been record breaking what feels different now is that this does not in any way feel like a one-off. That we will return in the rest of the decade to cool mid 20s, and a ‘heatwave’ is a day or two above 28C. It feels like this is just the beginning of something that will worsen and worsen as the years and decades progress. I’m not doomerist - I think as collective humanity can rise to the challenge, but a severe challenge it will be.

For he who knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.

Seeing the a nuclear inferno in the sky disappear behind a ball of loose rock broke down some barriers I had around myself for a moment about my own, and all of humanity’s separation from the universe, about the need to grasp the time we have and protect the earth that we have emerged from.

I hope I can remember this, and yes I am aware of the irony of burning tonnes of aviation fuel to come to an eco mindset - but we should be able to find a balance of living a little and protecting nature (which is the same as protecting ourselves)