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Sunday, January 30, 2011

Earthrise


Until the Apollo missions with NASA in the late 1960s and early 1970s, we had not seen the earth from the vantage point of space. We did not know how blue and beautiful we were from afar. For the first time we saw an image of one earth. It was different from those world maps we had seen in geography textbooks, or the globes that sat in the classrooms. Those were contrived by artists and showed divisions, countries, and boundaries. For the first time, we saw through the astronaut’s lens a single, beautiful, living thing – a lovely oasis of life illuminated in the darkness of space. Though we did not feel it down on the ground, with all our conflicts and divisions, we could see it in that photo taken from the moon.

Even now, all these years later, it is difficult to realize what was seen so clearly from space. We are one planet, one people, one life, one earth. We indeed have a treasure to celebrate and preserve.



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2 comments:

  1. GregJanuary 30, 2011 at 4:55 PM

    I enjoyed reading "Earthrise". Beautiful!

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  2. What Matters MostJanuary 30, 2011 at 8:39 PM

    The events in Egypt this week make me realize yet again that all people in the world are the same, that we all want the same things, and most important of all, the Internet, Facebook and Twitter are making the world smaller by the minute. Maybe we should all pause and take time to look carefully at this photo every so often to help us realize that we are one planet, one people, and that each of us is dependent on the other.

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