Last night my wife and I had the privilege of viewing a great documentary film called In the Shadow of the Moon. It takes you on a journey through the highs and lows of the race to the moon, much like any other manned-spaceflight documentary; however, this journey is narrated completely by the actual men who took those first steps across wide open lunar vistas.
Other than being a great documentary, the one thing that remains with me the most is the completely unique perspective each of these men have on the fragile marble upon which we live. Stepping back over two hundred thousand miles away from our planet really allows one to capture the ‘big picture’. Political and physical boundaries disintegrated, and for once the entire planet as a whole (humankind) could be observed (in low earth orbit, only a small portion of the earth’s curvature is visible). These men are the only human beings with such a perspective, and they all came back from their expeditions changed, enlightened. Many of them no longer deny the reality of a creator, someone way bigger than us and our world, because of the overwhelming evidence they were witness to for three days to the moon and three days back home. What a wonderful gift we’ve been given!
Since I’m not currently in possession of my camera (see previous post), the image above was not taken last night. However, I did want to share it anyway. It’s not the best shot of the moon, since it was taken from the middle of the urban jungle with all the wonderful street lamps helping out (sarcasm warning), but it does effectively allow me to stare at the lunar landscape that we visited nearly forty years ago. I think this image has a similar effect as seeing the earth from so far away (this was approximately the perspective the lunar astronauts had of the earth). I can’t accept the idea that this just haphazardly formed in a perfect orbit around our world, controlling the tides such that our coastal cities don’t drown under the ocean’s current (among many other things affected by the moon’s gravitational effect on earth). To stare at the moon (or any other heavenly body for that matter), is to gain a unique perspective. A perspective that allows us to realize how small we are, how unimportant our conflicts are, how screwed up our appropriation of wealth is*, how fragile our world is, and most importantly that our Creator is much larger than us.
* – this is not a political statement by any means; it’s a remark with regard to how we all spend our resources, how we appropriate our wealth. For example, we (our society) are willing to spend billions of dollars on pornography each year to fill some empty, carnal pleasure. This wealth alone could easily provide clean drinking water to the entire world (maybe even food too). I just wish we as Americans would stop being so bent on our ‘freedoms’ that we are willing to stand by and watch unbelievable amounts of money wasted on detrimental and destroying practices (not to mention all the other things we waste resources on that zap our brains of cells). Is this truly being free anyway? I guess these are Pollyanish remarks, but I wish that we could use this wealth for valuable, useful reasons. We could have an occupied base on the moon and Mars, in addition to clean drinking water and food for the world (and one world currency, and no more war, and…just kidding) if we would have said ‘enough’ to pornography alone years ago (not to mention professional wrestling, reality TV, and Teletubbies, just to name a few).
