On Christmas Eve in 1968, while the astronauts of Apollo 8 circumnavigated the moon, a momentous shift in perspective emerged unexpectedly for human-kind. In the midst of the space module’s scheduled “roll” to capture photos of the moon’s surface, Astronaut Bill Anders noticed a fantastic image arising over his shoulder. “Oh my God!” Anders exclaimed. “Look at that picture over there!” Coming into view was a spectacular vision of Earth rising over the moon. “There’s the Earth comin’ up! Wow, is that pretty!” Exhilarated by the thrill of seeing their home planet rising like a blue marble over the moon’s horizon, all three astronauts, including flight Commander Frank Borman and Command Module Pilot Jim Lovell, collaborated to allow Bill Anders to snap the iconic color photo known all over the world as Earthrise. A truly serendipitous moment was captured that Christmas Eve in 1968, at the conclusion of what had been a most notorious year of bloodshed, brutality and assassinations amidst ongoing protests for racial justice. The image of one living Earth from the vantage point of the moon captured a feeling of pacific serenity, unity and peace. (https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasa-releases-new-earthrise-simulation-video)
Today in 2020, we are also faced with massive upheaval, global protests for racial justice and civil liberties, a raging pandemic, and an all-out assault on the natural environment and the good of the whole biosphere. For the first time in human history, we humans have decimated the very fabric of creation through excessive consumption, unprecedented pollution and toxic waste. We have virtually lost the languages of our fellow Earth-inhabitants, driving many creature-kin and arbor elders into premature extinction. In the human realm alone, hatred, division and xenophobia are spewed from the bowels of elitist anthropocentrism, while sheer antipathy for our beautiful blue oasis of swirling life is stealing its very essence, its vibrant, energetic breath. We (as in “we humans”) are choking the planet to death, destroying Earth, stealing Home from the world’s inhabitants, and from future generations as well.
How do we heal home?
Three lessons from the Apollo 8 experience:
1) Be willing to roll with the emergent, and embrace an unexpected shift in perspective. It may offer an opportunity to broaden our understanding of “Home” and the wider “WE,” and help us experience real awe and joy in the midst of phenomenal surprise.
2) Work together to frame and capture the emergent experience. WE all have a role, a voice, a perspective, including ALL our relations, human-kin, creature-kin, plant-kin and arbor elders, oceans and rivers, soil, air, and creative energy itself. We humans must learn to become polylinguists once again, embracing the multitudinous languages of all our Earth-kin. It is time to tune into the magnificent chorus and begin hearing the whole symphony in which we play a part.
3) PRACTICE great care for the whole, the big “WE” of the living organism we call Home, Earth. Stop excessive consumption, pollution and waste. Live simply, taking delight in creation with genuine gratitude and unbounded joy. Practice intentional breathing through mindfulness, presencing, meditation, prayer or exploring nature. Listen more carefully and deeply by welcoming the silence and stillness. Work toward healing divisions in our personal and collective spheres. Plant seeds for eco-justice, radical hospitality, and dialogue among ALL our relations, human and other-kin. Exchange the posture of pervasive fear and self-protection for one that embraces societal and environmental justice. WE are all twirling on this beautiful blue marble! This is our wider “WE,” our Home. Wouldn’t we have been filled with awe and wonder if we had been on Apollo 8? We need that kind of awe-filled reverence for creation today. In the heart-catching words of little Dorothy from Kansas, “Oh, Auntie Em, there’s no place like Home!”
Thomas Berry, the celebrated eco-logian who championed the Great Work of renewing the Earth, offered this gem in 1988, twenty years after Apollo 8, and his words echo profoundly today:
“If we lived on the moon, our mind and emotions, our speech, our imagination, our sense of the divine would all reflect the desolation of the lunar landscape … While such an order of magnitude can produce a paralysis of thought and action, it can, we hope, also awaken in us a sense of what is happening, the scale on which things are happening, and move us to a program of reinhabiting the Earth in a truly human manner. It could awaken in us an awareness of our need for all the living companions we have here on our homeland planet. To lose any of these splendid companions is to diminish our own lives here. To learn how to live graciously together would make us worthy of this unique, beautiful, blue planet that evolved in its present splendor over some billions of years, a planet that we should give over to our children with the assurance that this great community of the living will lavish upon them the care that it has bestowed so abundantly upon ourselves.”
—Thomas Berry, The Dream of the Earth, p. 11–12
—Laura Weber, Prairiewoods associate director and retreats coordinator