A telegram sent to the crew of Apollo 8, after their historic lunar orbital mission, said, "You've saved 1968!" While 2018 was no where near as horrible as 1968 (the raging war in Viet Nam, the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy), I found myself waxing nostalgic as to the "healing" powers of Apollo 8 and its near miraculous voyage from the earth to the moon, complete with astronauts Borman, Lovell, and Anders reading from Genesis on Christmas Eve, and capturing the famous "Earthrise" photo that would later launch "Earth Day" and a broader concern for the environment. 2018 was the 50th anniversary of this space journey, and I watched every video and read every retrospective article and editorial I could, hoping to recapture some of its magic. It helped. Tom Hanks produced a marvelous series for HBO years ago called "From the Earth to the Moon," and I have it on DVD. It covers the entire Apollo program, was co-produced by Ronny Howard, and is WELL worth reviewing. I watched the Apollo 8 episode about three times over the holidays.
Humankind needs faith and inspiration. Pure humanism, while a valid and valuable "starter" for developing care for one's fellow human beings, doesn't "make our spirits soar." Apollo 8 did that, as did Apollo 11, six months later. My wife and I saw the recent film "First Man," about the first man, Neil Armstrong. It's a very good film. It jars those of us, though, who followed and loved the space program by leading off with African American performer, Gil Scott-Heron's "Whitey on the Moon." In this piece, Scott-Heron chides America for ignoring domestic needs while spending billions to put "whitey on the moon." His point is a necessary counterpoint to spending tax dollars to accomplish what some consider frivolous pursuits (a wall on the Southern boarder?) However, the trips to the moon "saved" a difficult era and gave humanity a new vision for our planet, "a grand oasis in the big vastness of space," in the words of Jim Lovell. We are "riders on the earth, together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold" (Poet Laureate, Archibald MacLeish).
It is time for that faith and inspiration again, Dear Ones. May 2019 be one for the record books, and not for the same, inane reasons 2018 may be. Faith may best be described in the words of Robert Kennedy: "Some see things as they are, and say 'Why?' I dream things that never were, and say 'Why not?'" Faith is like the second half of this statement--it's most valuable function is to help us dream about how things COULD be, and pray and work for it to become so. May your 2019 be that kind of year!
Finally, in celebration of the 50th anniversary of Apollo 8, I quote (in its entirety) the inspiring poem by Archibald MacLeish, written as he reflected on the revelations of that first lunar excursion:
Riders on Earth Together, Brothers in Eternal Cold
Men's conception of themselves and of each other has always depended on their notion of the earth. When the earth was the World -- all the world there was -- and the stars were lights in Dante's heaven, and the ground beneath men's feet roofed Hell, they saw themselves as creatures at the center of the universe, the sole, particular concern of God -- and from that high place they ruled and killed and conquered as they pleased.And when, centuries later, the earth was no longer the World but a small, wet spinning planet in the solar system of a minor star off at the edge of an inconsiderable galaxy in the immeasurable distances of space -- when Dante's heaven had disappeared and there was no Hell (at least no Hell beneath the feet) -- men began to see themselves not as God-directed actors at the center of a noble drama, but as helpless victims of a senseless farce where all the rest were helpless victims also and millions could be killed in world-wide wars or in blasted cities or in concentration camps without a thought or reason but the reason -- if we call it one -- of force.
Now, in the last few hours, the notion may have changed again. For the first time in all of time men have seen it not as continents or oceans from the little distance of a hundred miles or two or three, but seen it from the depth of space; seen it whole and round and beautiful and small as even Dante -- that "first imagination of Christendom" -- had never dreamed of seeing it; as the Twentieth Century philosophers of absurdity and despair were incapable of guessing that it might be seen. And seeing it so, one question came to the minds of those who looked at it. "Is it inhabited?" they said to each other and laughed -- and then they did not laugh. What came to their minds a hundred thousand miles and more into space -- "half way to the moon" they put it -- what came to their minds was the life on that little, lonely, floating planet; that tiny raft in the enormous, empty night. "Is it inhabited?"
The medieval notion of the earth put man at the center of everything. The nuclear notion of the earth put him nowhere -- beyond the range of reason even -- lost in absurdity and war. This latest notion may have other consequences. Formed as it was in the minds of heroic voyagers who were also men, it may remake our image of mankind. No longer that preposterous figure at the center, no longer that degraded and degrading victim off at the margins of reality and blind with blood, man may at last become himself.
To see the earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold -- brothers who know now they are truly brothers.
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