The year was 1968. My husband was in Vietnam during that tumultuous year, and I flew across country with our 18-month-old daughter to spend Christmas with my family. Apollo 8 had taken off on December 21, the first manned spacecraft to leave earth’s gravity and orbit the moon. My grandmother, who had lost a son (my father) in World War II was part of the family group that gathered around the television set on Christmas Eve and watched as cameras showed us, for the first time, an earth rise as it appeared over the rim of the moon. In front was the stark white and black moonscape, and there in the background in ever growing luminosity was our earth, glowing like a jewel in the blackness of space. There was no evidence of war or poverty or suffering or strife --- just oceans a bright, deep blue, land a soft tan, and beautiful white streamers of clouds wisping over the face of it all. We were all down there somewhere in that beautiful jewel, caught up in the individual dramas of our lives, but from out in space all our concerns seemed petty and unimportant. This gem of a planet belonged to all of mankind, and it seemed an oasis in the cold and unfriendly universe in which it floated.
Then from thousands and thousands of miles away, the voice of an astronaut wended its long way down to earth reading the inspiring words from the very first chapter of the Bible. ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, “Let there be light: and there was light …and God saw that it was good.”
There was silence in the living room as we sat in the darkened space, the Christmas tree lights twinkling behind us, and the images of our earth in front of us in a way mankind had never been able to view it before. I was sitting next to my grandmother whose stillness was profound, her rapt face watching our changing universe on the television screen. Then she reached out quietly and took my hand. We sat there linked, young hand in old, my grandmother silently reaching out across her losses to hold the hand of a member of yet another generation of her family caught up in a far-away conflict. Yet in that soul-soothing moment, I think we both felt, for just a moment, that Christmas message of long ago might really be possible, “And on earth, peace goodwill towards men.”