Let there be light

On Christmas Eve, 1968, America watched excitedly on primetime tv as Apollo 8 orbited the moon. From outer space, Commander Frank Borman recited the ten opening lines of the Bible as he became the first human being to see Earth from so far away. I heard about this on NPR this morning. Borman's words hadn't been planned in advance by NASA, and they struck many people with their poignancy. Glynn Lunney, a NASA flight controller working that night, captured the spirit of the moment exceptionally well:

"It's almost like thinking about the human race growing up, coming out of the caves, growing up, making all the mistakes that we do, and then somehow having the intellectual ability to create something that goes to the moon," he said. "It's sort of like ... it's our best."

1968 was a tough year, filled with political assasinations and Vietnam, with the Cold War serving as an ominous backdrop. I've written before about the appeal of moments of unifying patriotism. The space race certainly served as one of these moments. Archibald MacLeish wrote in the New York Times about the transcendent power of outer space:

"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."

Forty years later, on Christmas eve 2008, I am still drawn by the feelings of unity that these words evoke. When you look past the crazed shopping frenzy and overplayed music, the spirit of Christmas is really not so different from the theme of Borman's address or MacLeish's poem. We're all a bunch of earthlings, living on a blue orb, pondering the miracle of our own existence.

So in Borman's words, "goodnight, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth."