For Wilshire Baptist Church
I can’t believe I missed the SpaceX launch on Saturday. Rocket launches have become so commonplace and the missions so nebulous during my lifetime that I haven’t given them much attention in years, but I was interested this time.
I knew nothing about the two astronauts — not even their names — but I was concerned for them because this was the first manned flight with a new technology developed by a new public-private partnership. I saw the Challenger shuttle explode into a thousand pieces on live TV in 1986, and I heard Columbia explode over Texas on a Saturday morning in 2003. Sadly, those disasters had me in a mind to watch the SpaceX launch, but then I got wrapped up in the mundane activities of a Saturday and I totally forgot about it.
Among those activities was starting a new jigsaw puzzle. We’ve been working puzzles during the Covid-19 shutdown, and after posting a picture on Facebook of a 1,000-piece puzzle depicting an old-fashioned bookstore full of books from floor to ceiling, a dear friend saw it and asked if she could have it. Last week we glued it together so she can hang it on her wall, but not before I looked online to remember how to do that. The last time I glued a puzzle for framing was in 1969. That puzzle featured the Apollo 11 astronauts — Neil, Buzz and Michael — suited up in front of a picture of the moon. It’s been 51 years since I cared that much about a rocket launch or a jigsaw puzzle.
More puzzling than any of that is the how and why of continued violence in our world. In the decades since I glued that puzzle of the Apollo astronauts, humankind has learned so much about the cosmos and space exploration. We’re told our telescopes can see so deep and far into space that they almost can see the beginning of time. There’s a feeling that if we look hard enough, we might even one day see the face of God, but you have to wonder if that face would be turned away from us in grief.
It seems we have learned little about how to live in peace with one another. Those summers in the late 1960s when we were racing to conquer the moon were also full of protests for peace, social justice and equality. Those demonstrations have ebbed and flowed over the years, going dormant when we are in a state of complacent peace, only to flare up again when someone does something that reminds us that we still don’t love, trust and respect each other. If we thought the fighting was over and that peace had taken root across the land, we were mistaken. All our science and technology — and all our bookstores full of wisdom and good counsel — have not moved us any closer to being people of peace and harmony.
It’s ironic that when the Apollo 11 astronauts departed the moon, they left behind a plaque on the steps of the lunar module with these words: “Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon. We came in peace for all mankind.” Really? We proclaimed peace on the moon when we can’t manage peace on Earth?
And it’s an ironic shame that some of the most outspoken champions of space travel today dream out loud about colonizing Mars or some such place. Surely God will never allow that to happen after the mess we’ve made on this planet. Surely God knows when to cut the losses and call it a day.