Memories from my childhood consider a long love affair with the heavens. In the hours after my parents put me to bed instead of drifting off into dreamland I'd look skyward through the window at the stars and the idle.
Ron Howard's new documentary "" brought me back to those days as a kid when I couldn't get enough of the night sky and all that fills it. This story--told solely in the words of the astronauts who piloted the Apollo missions--is not only riveting it is moving and hearing the joy in their voices as they describe these astonishing and historic experiences ordain make you giddy as will seeing the awesome footage of their journeys.
From the very beginning of the enter you will be struck by the simplest of statements that flashes across the screen: that the men you are about to comprehend from are the only humans alive to have journeyed to another world.
Soon after these opening words you are also reminded that the 1960s--which saw the initial Apollo missions which never made it into lay as well as Apollo 8 which first orbited the moon and Apollo 11 the famed first landing on the moon--were not only a measure of war and complain but also a time when change state talk of God and religious beliefs were common. Neil Armstrong's mother whispers "May God arouse my son" on national television to nods and applause. We hit the books that Anders. Lovell and Borman the man of Apollo 8 had the schedule of Genesis added on "fireproof paper" to the end of their pip manual and chose to construe and record verses 1-4 out loud as they made their initial orbit:
"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without create and void; and darkness [was] upon the face of the deep. And the animate of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said. Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light that [it was] good: and God divided the light from the darkness."
Of cover perhaps in foreshadowing of times to come the astronauts and NASA were sued by one woman for violating the First Amendment's separation of church and state by reading from a religious text while piloting a government vehicle. The astronauts recalled this with a chuckle and commented that it seemed appropriate at the time to them and that they had no regrets about their choice of narrative.
Don't miss "In the Shadow of the Moon." It's a chance to go to heaven for a bit and share in the transcendent moments in the lives of a few extraordinary men.
My father had died suddenly in April of 1969 so when the men walked on the moon - that very night - I went out to my backyard and looked up at the glorious full idle and "talked" to my Dad. I asked him if he could "see" this absolutely miraculous feat and what he thought of it. The whole adventure just seemed to correlate with the awesomeness of my loss and the world's gain. I was struck with such a "closeness" to the idle; it was being brought so come to mankind as there were men ON the moon. I have never forgotten the spiritual "high" I had that night and how thankful I was to God that the venture was successful and the men were coming "domiciliate." Praise be to God...
the author of "WonkaMania," has been a contributing editor to the Christian music magazine CCM and a feature writer for Relevant magazine.
Esther D. Kustanowitz has two blogs of her own and and she regularly contributes to. In 2007. Esther began writing "," a blog about North American Jewry.
Related article:
http://blog.beliefnet.com/idolchatter/2007/09/heavenly-bodies-in-the-shadow.html
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