Streams of Mercy
How well I remember that moment 50 years ago, as my brother, my mother and I sat in front our television, watching American Astronaut Neil Armstrong take his famous “small step for [a] man” and “giant leap for mankind.” It was the summer before my senior year in college – a time when I thought all things were possible!
Years later I learned some very special things about Armstrong’s fellow astronaut Buzz Aldrin. The astronaut was an elder at Webster Presbyterian Church in Houston, Texas. Carrying bread in a plastic packet and a chalice from his home church, Buzz Aldrin invited the NASA team to take communion with him. Aldrin planned to take communion as close in time as possible to his church family back home in Houston, and had been given a light silver cup by his pastor, Dean Woodruff.
NASA, wary after atheist activist Madalyn Murray O’Hair sued NASA for compromising the separation of church and state by reading the creation account in Genesis on the Apollo 8 trip a year earlier, decided against broadcasting the event, except to the NASA team, who could listen in.
In an article for Guideposts magazine in 1970, Aldrin described the moment:
“I unstowed the elements in their flight packets. I put them and the scripture reading on the little table in front of the abort guidance system computer. Then I called back to Houston. ‘Houston, this is Eagle. This is the LM Pilot speaking. I would like to request a few moments of silence. I would like to invite each person listening in, wherever and whomever he may be, to contemplate for a moment the events of the past few hours, and to give thanks in his own individual way.’ In the radio blackout I opened the little plastic packages which contained bread and wine … Just before I partook of the elements, I read the words, which I had chosen to indicate our trust that as man probes into space we are in fact acting in Christ. I sensed especially strongly my unity with our church back home, and with the Church everywhere. I read: ‘I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me, and I in him, will bear much fruit; for you can do nothing without me’. I poured the wine into the chalice our church had given me. In the one-sixth gravity of the moon, the wine curled slowly and gracefully up the side of the cup. It was interesting to think that the very first liquid ever poured on the moon, and the first food eaten there, were communion elements … People everywhere, looking up at the vastness of the heavens in awe of its Creator and source, ALL came together, and somehow the vastness seemed smaller. God, to many, seemed somehow closer. Each one seemed an integral part of a much bigger whole. Distance drew people near; expansiveness highlighted smallness; focused on this, the world itself seemed to converge.”
I just learned that the Webster Presbyterian Church still celebrates their connection with the moon landing every year on the nearest Sunday, with the event description for Sunday reading: “On July 21, 1969, the people of WPC read Psalm 8 and took communion in solidarity with the Apollo 11 crew.
“When I consider the heavens, the works of Thy fingers,
the moon and the stars which Thou hast ordained,
what is man that Thou art mindful of him?
And the son of man, that thou visiteth him?”
I mark this occasion in my heart, giving thanks to the God who ordained the moon and the stars, and is mindful of each one of us gazing up into the heavens from our place here on God’s good earth. I give thanks for those events that bring us together and pray for more such moments of oneness. I’m grateful to have been a part of the time when “we” took that “giant leap for mankind,” and for continuing traveling mercies along the way.
Elizabeth