By Mary Kay RothI had just hugged Snow White when my parents suddenly ushered my brother and me into a huge indoor arena at Disneyland, a vast warehouse with crowds of people stuffed together – all staring up at television sets scattered wall to wall.
The room was completely still. Mickey Mouse was nowhere in sight.
Eyes glued to TV screens.
The first human was walking on the moon.
“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
And the room erupted in an explosion of gleeful applause, way beyond anything reserved for the Magic Kingdom.
Today, decades later, that childhood magic is a bit tarnished. But the mystique of outer space stays with me.
Black holes, stardust and meteor showers. The origins of life. Star Trek and Star Wars. Moongazing at that big, beautiful globe shining down.
Last week, more than half a century from when I visited Disneyland, I watched the launch of Artemis II, heading to the moon, and I felt an even greater sense of awe, reverence and perhaps urgency.
“The first thing I would say is, trust us, you look amazing. You look beautiful,” said NASA astronaut Victor Glover. “And from up here, you also look like one thing. Homo sapiens is all of us, no matter where you’re from or what you look like. We’re all one people.”
I’ve always loved those photos of our planet Earth taken from spaceships – taken from the moon – where earth looks like a delicate even fragile blue oasis, beautiful and in dire need of protection. Trite but true, from space there are no boundaries, no walls or even countries.
Artemis astronaut Christina Koch, after liftoff: “You don’t see borders, you don’t see religious lines, you don’t see political boundaries. All you see is Earth and you see that we are way more alike than we are different.”
My heart sings a little at the cosmic renewal I take away from that thought, a transcendence of earthly limitations and silly resentments in exchange for a celebration of the diversity and commonality of human experience.
So, as four astronauts took off last week I tried to imagine – at a time when our world seems fractured and weary – if there are other remaining moments that give us a such a shared sense of humanity.
On a 10-day mission, this is the first crewed lunar flyby in more than 50 years.
Traveling in a craft dwarfed by the vastness of space. A craft that will likely soar a record 250,000 miles away from Earth. A craft with a crew of four remarkable explorers that includes a black man, a woman and, good grief, even Canadian Jeremy Hansen, who noted: "Humanity has once again shown what we are capable of, and it's your hopes for the future that carry us now on this journey around the moon.”
In fact, in a few days those astronauts will reach and circle Earth’s closest neighbor, up close and personal, going incommunicado while they view perspectives on the dark side never observed by human eyes – paving the way for a crewed mission that might once again land on the moon.
And we watch.
Together.
The guy who just sacked my groceries and my dentist. The families I met in South America and Africa. My cousins in Nebraska and in California. Birthright citizens, immigrants, refugees. The neighbor who brought me cookies and the neighbor who is upset with me. Folks on cruise ships and in fishing boats.
Each night, people around the world still gaze up at celestial wonders, the stars, lunar and solar eclipses, northern lights, unexpected gifts that continue to give us a sense of curiosity, incredulity and togetherness.
In Project Hail Mary, a grand movie that has just hit the theaters, a science teacher named Ryland Grace (played by Ryan Gosling) has been sent into outer space on a mission to save the earth from a dying sun. Spoiler alert, Gosling meets up and joins forces with an alien named Rocky – from planet Erid, 16 light years from Earth – so they can rescue, not just our planet, but the entire universe.
“The universe is so vast, yet our connection to each other is what ultimately matters,” the science teacher says in the movie. “We are all connected. We are all part of something greater than ourselves.”
Imagine, saved by heroics and inter-alien camaraderie.
“Do you believe in God?” asks Andy Weir, the author of Project Hail Mary. “I know it’s a personal question. I do. And I think he was pretty awesome to make relativity a thing, don’t you? The faster you go, the less time you experience. It’s like he’s inviting us to explore the universe, you know? We are all astronauts navigating the vast unknown. It is our duty to leave a lasting legacy.”
Sometimes that’s tough to remember.
When your daffodils freeze – and you can’t figure out how to open your garage door opener (to replace batteries) – and three keys on your laptop keep sticking – and you’re the “next caller in line” for more than half an hour – and our wise historian Heather Cox Richardson says Donald Trump is “cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.”
Despite such nonsense, life continues to beckon us to embrace the shared wonder of our cosmos.
And, yes, space travel provides profound scientific discovery.
But I prefer the breathtaking wonder of it all, the relentless human desire to go beyond.
Poet Mary Oliver, urges us to “Keep some room in our heart for the unimaginable,” describing outer space as a vast tapestry of unknowns, each thread woven with threads of mystery and adventure.
Somehow, I can’t imagine a greater vision on this beautiful spring Easter weekend, because I cannot look up at a full moon without pausing, reflecting, taking stock of who I am and how fortunate I am to be alive.
Long, long ago, Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart looked down upon Earth and reminded us:
“You realize that on that small spot, that little blue and white thing, is everything that means anything to you. All of history and music and poetry and art and war and death and birth and love, tears, joy, games — all of it on that little spot out there that you can cover with your thumb. And you realize that that perspective has — that you’ve changed. That there’s something new there. That relationship is no longer what it was.”
More than timely!
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