With everything that’s going on in my life, I forgot until just now there’s an anniversary this weekend. On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon. Before all you conspiracy nuts try to whack me upside the head, that isn’t why the anniversary is significant to me (I was, after all, just one year old).
I think it would be fair to say many people don’t know about something that happened that day, inside the very tight confines of the lunar lander. They don’t know because what Buzz Aldrin did was not broadcast as the rest of the landing was.
Aldrin paused before Armstrong got ready to head out and asked everyone to simply give thanks in their own way. Here is some actual audio:
Even more significant is what happened next. It moves me incredibly just to think of it. Aldrin pulls the elements for communion from a pocket on his spacesuit, and reads from the scripture before he takes it. All off the net, of course. It moves me because some of the first words spoken on the moon were the words of Jesus Christ, and the first meal taken was in memory of what he did for all of us. Not just Americans, or Christians. Not just white people or black people. Not just US Citizens.
All of us.
Whether or not you believe does not make it any less true. Nor does it make Aldrin’s act any less brave. It just kind of bums me out that even in 1969, political correctness was beginning to rear its ugly head.
Here’s another short clip, from the Earth to the Moon miniseries of a few years ago.
A Work in Progress 