“It is not usually helpful to point out another person’s sins and shortcomings. What people need far more is a loving acceptance and affirmation of their worth, a kindly forbearance towards their weaknesses. This compassionate acceptance we must exercise not only towards others, but also towards ourselves.” – SSJE (Society of St. John the Evancelist), Br. David Vryhof
2024 Sun July 21
Spirituality of the Apollo Space Program
July 20 always brings back memories of the moon landing of Apollo 11. On that day in 1969, Commander Neil Armstrong and lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin landed the Apollo Lunar Module Eagle on the moon.
A unique book about the space program “To Touch the Face of God 1957-1975” by Kendrick Oliver, published in 2013 is about the role of religion, with the astronauts. How did religion and faith affect the astronauts during the flight and later as they tried to reflect on it? Highly recommended!
5 examples and quoting liberally from the book without quotes. It was clear that the missions affected everyone differently and some more than others. I have chosen those where there was a definite response.
1. Buzz Aldrin on Apollo 11 was an elder of Webster Presbyterian, where Glenn had also worshipped; he taught Sunday school at the church, as did his wife Joan. Aldrin marked his arrival on the moon by serving himself communion, “symbolizing the thought that God was revealing himself there too, as man reached out into the universe.” Finally, in a television transmission as the crew was headed back to earth, Aldrin reflected on the “symbolic aspects” of the Apollo 11 mission and quoted from Psalm 8: “When I consider the heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars which Thou hast ordained, what is man that Thou art mindful of him?”
2. Standing on the porch of his lunar module during the Earth-orbital mission of Apollo 9, Russell Schweickart was unexpectedly afforded five minutes to register his position in the universe while his crewmate Dave Scott attended to a problem with his camera. “Now you’re out there,” he later re-called, “and there are no frames, there are no limits, there are no boundaries. You’re really out there, going 25,000 miles an hour, ripping through space, a vacuum
Eventually, by the end of the mission, his sense of connection had come to encompass the whole of the earth. “And somehow you recognize,” he stated, “that you’re a piece of this total life. And you’re out there on that forefront and you have to bring that back somehow. And that becomes a rather special responsibility and it tells you something about your relationship with this thing we call life. So that’s a change.”
It was to this planet, and not some starry futurity, that he now knew that he belonged, “a piece of this total life.” Many years later he reflected about his experience. “It has in many ways given me the opportunity to initiate things, whether that was forming the Association of Space Explorers or starting the B612 Foundation, protecting the Earth. I’ve been able to do a lot of things because I flew in space that have implications for the future that weren’t part of Apollo 9 per se
3 For Frank Borman on Apollo 8, a lay reader in his Episcopal Church the voyage to the moon offered proof of man’s dependence on God: the earth was a “miracle of creation,” and everything else was “eternal cold”. While in lunar orbit, Borman also recorded a prayer to be played to his church during its Christmas Eve service, in lieu of the lay-reader duty he had been scheduled to perform.
4 Apollo 14 lunar-module pilot, Edgar Mitchell. “Now, in an “ecstasy of unity,” as he coasted between moon and earth, he rapidly arrived at an understanding of what this cosmology really meant: that everything was connected. “It occurred to me,” he wrote, “that the molecules of my body and the molecules of the spacecraft itself were manufactured long ago in the furnace of one of the ancient stars that burned in the heavens about me.”
5 When James Irwin, lunar-module pilot on Apollo 15 had a problem erecting the power generator for the various scientific experiments that he and Scott were to leave on the moon, he prayed for guidance and immediately came up with a solution. The next day, he spotted a strange, light-colored rock sitting on a base of gray stone, almost, Scott recalled, ”as if it had been placed on a pedestal to be admired.” Scott wiped away some of the dust covering the rock and saw that it was composed of large, white crystals, an indication that it had once belonged to the moon’s primordial crust. “I think we found what we came for,” he told mission control. Later the rock would be dated at more than four billion years old, close to the age of the solar system itself, and given the name Genesis Rock. To Irwin, the peculiar placement of the rock—“it seemed to say, ‘here I am, take me’ ”—was evidence that its discovery had been the will of God.
[He wanted to hold a service celebrating the beauty of his surrounding but couldn’t interest his partner who reminded him of their tight schedule”]. Irwin offered up instead one of his favorite lines of scripture, from Psalm 121: “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.” He sensed, he later wrote, “the beginning of some sort of deep change taking place inside me,” from the shallow, fitful religious faith that had marked his life before the moon to a new confidence in the power and agency of God
Summer Diversions
"so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens."
The poem is "The Red Wheelbarrow" William Carlos Williams, 1883 – 1963
Williams called this poem "quite perfect" and since its publication in 1923 it has been a staple of classrooms. People have wondered " Where is this wheelbarrow and who owned it ?" But now 90 years later the owner of the wheelbarrow has been identified.
On July 18, in a moment of belated poetic justice, a stone will be laid on the otherwise unmarked grave of Thaddeus Marshall, an African-American street vendor from Rutherford, N.J., noting his unsung contribution to American literature.
William Logan a professor at the University of Florida has published an essay on the poem in the most recent issue of the literary journal Parnassus It considers the poem from seemingly every conceivable angle. But also traces back the owner of the wheelbarrow. The story is the subject of a NY Times book review article
In a note quoted in a 1933 anthology, Williams said he had seen the wheelbarrow “outside the window of an old negro’s house on a backstreet” in Rutherford, where Williams also lived and regularly paid house calls to patients in the African-American neighborhood.
Logan’s clues for identifying Marshall came from the 1920 census, a 1917 insurance map and the help of a local historian. The man – Thaddeus Marshall, a 69-year-old widower who lived with a son named Milton at 11 Elm Street, about nine blocks from Williams’s house. He located a great-granddaughter, Teresa Marshall Hale, of Roselle, N.J., who grew up in the house on Elm Street and recalled family stories about her great-grandfather selling eggs and vegetables.
Funds were raised for a marker on Marhsall’s grave since he was buried without a headstone. A red and white wreath, signifying the red wheelbarrow and white chickens, will be laid beside it.
Just as religion, poetry is important to us as a way to go deeper within ourselves, a different way of viewing experience. Images like this become part of whom we are.
Mary Magdalene, July 22
“Noli Me Tangere” (Touch Me Not) – Correggio (1534)
In Bishop Curry’s book Crazy Christians: A Call to Follow Jesus, he writes “We need some crazy Christians like Mary Magdalene and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Christians crazy enough to believe that God is real and that Jesus lives. Crazy enough to follow the radical way of the Gospel. Crazy enough to believe that the love of God is greater than all the powers of evil and death.”
Mary Magdalene, known as the “Apostle to the Apostles,” holds a special place in Christian history. Her devotion to Jesus was legendary. Mary was ever faithful to Jesus while others dropped away. She was there in the key moments of his ministry. She was a witness to the worst on Holy Week, his death on Good Friday and then first on that first Easter Sunday, the best. She was a leader in the early Church
Facts from Living Discipleship:Celebrating the Saints and The Anglican Compass:
- We know Mary was from Magdala in Galilee (thus the surname “Magdalene”).
- Luke reports that Jesus cast seven demons out of her (8:2). After her healing, rather than returning to her home, Mary Magdalene followed Jesus for the rest of his life and ministry. While she followed Jesus, she also helped provide financial support (Luke 8:1-3). Unlike most of the other disciples, she was present at his crucifixion, remaining faithfully with him as the others fled and hid (John 19:25). She then accompanies Jesus’ mother to bury the body of Jesus (Matthew 27:51); she is the only one of his followers who is there when his body is laid in the tomb (Mark 15:47).