What a week! It was a wonderful Holy Week and Easter this year. Not only did we have the waving palms, the partnership with SouthPark Christian Church, the children in their finery, the choir and bell choir making lovely music, various readers doing a great job for these important services, and staff working double-time, we were also reminded of the marvel that creation is on a grand scale. It just so happened that NASA’s Artemis II Mission around the Moon started the Wednesday of our holiest week on our calendar.
Four Astronauts representing diversity on a small scale (including difference in gender and skin color and country of origin), who prepared themselves to spend day and night together for 10 days on this momentous journey, decided to call their spaceship Integrity. Carefully, with great intention, they set out to live in a way that values all of humanity, its past, and its future.
They posted two flags on the interior of the ship: a Canadian flag and an American flag to honor astronauts of the two countries working together on this mission. They also carried a flag that was supposed to be used for the cancelled Apollo 18 mission so that it, too, could make that trek around the Moon. In a moving moment, three of the four astronauts got together and decided to name a bright spot on the Moon after the late wife of their colleague Reid Wiseman (something that surprised him into tears), Carroll Tyler Wiseman. But their mission wasn’t all pomp and ceremony, symbolism and grand gestures. There was work to be done, as this spaceship went farther from earth than any human being has ever been. This journey required precision and important observations and great effort. Every insight, every new realization about what was happening out the window of that craft, was verbally described to Mission Control as well as catalogued in large-file photographs that were sent back to Earth to be viewable the very next day. In the moment, those astronauts who wanted to get a quick picture to Earth were able to take photos on their cell phones and text them to Earth instantly, like tourists taking pictures of the beach and sending them to family back home. The mission isn’t over, as I’m writing this. The four astronauts are slated to return to Earth later tonight and we pray for their safe arrival. They have much, I’m sure, to teach us, still.
