Reflection
“When I was the last man to walk on the moon in December 1972, I stood in the blue darkness and looked in awe at the earth from the lunar surface. What I saw was almost too beautiful to grasp. There was too much logic, too much purpose—it was just too beautiful to have happened by accident. It doesn’t matter how you choose to worship God…God has to exist to have created what I was privileged to see. You look back home and you say to yourself,’ that’s humanity, love, feeling, and thought.’ You don’t see the barriers of color, religion and politics that divide this world. You wonder, if you could get everyone in the world up there, wouldn’t they have a different feeling?”
Eugene Cernan, astronaut
Prayer
The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of God’s hands.
Psalm 19:1
Action
Imagine yourself viewing the earth from outer space. Compare it with what you see on earth, with what you hear every day, with your own attitudes toward people and toward planet earth. Answer for yourself the question at the end of Eugene Cernan’s reflection.
Suggested Reading
When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?
Psalm 8:1, 3-4
For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving.
1Timothy 4:4
You are never alone. You are eternally connected with everyone.
Amit Ray
We inter-breath with the rain forests, we drink from the oceans. They are part of our own body.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Your deepest roots are in nature. No matter who you are, where you live, or what kind of life you lead, you remain irrevocably linked with the rest of creation.
Charles Cook
There is something of the marvelous in all things of nature.
Aristotle
Go out, go out I beg of you
And taste the beauty of the wild.
Behold the miracle of the earth
With all the wonder of a child.
Edna Jaques
Look! Look! Look deep into nature and you will understand everything.
Albert Einstein
The universe, by definition, is a single gorgeous celebratory event.
Thomas Berry
The universe shivers with wonder in the depths of the human.
Brian Swimm