Communion on the moon

Between the seminary visit and being sick all week, I am lacking the energy to write something worthwhile (including required papers). I hope this will suffice, even if it is a few days late.

This is something my former boss sent me the other day that I thought was incredibly interesting and meaningful... enjoy.

> 40 years ago ...guess what happened...
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I had not heard of this before . . .
>
>
>
> Communion on the Moon
>
> I love this. How many of you knew? Too bad this type
> news doesn't travel as fast as bad.
>
> Communion on the Moon: July 20th, 1969
>
> (This is an article by Eric Metaxas)
>
> Forty years ago two human beings changed history by
> walking on the surface of the moon. But what happened before Buzz Aldrin
> and Neil Armstrong exited the Lunar Module is perhaps even more amazing,
> if only because so few people know about it. "I'm talking about the fact
> that Buzz Aldrin took communion on the surface of the moon. Some months
> after his return, he wrote about it in Guideposts magazine.
>
> And a few years ago I had the privilege of meeting him
> myself. I asked him about it and he confirmed the story to me, and I
> wrote about in my book Everything You Always Wanted to Know About God
> (But Were Afraid to Ask).
>
> The background to the story is that Aldrin was an elder
> at his Presbyterian Church in Texas during this period in his life, and
> knowing that he would soon be doing something unprecedented in human
> history, he felt he should mark the occasion somehow, and he asked his
> minister to help him. And so the minister consecrated a communion wafer
> and a small vial of communion wine. And Buzz Aldrin took them with him
> out of the Earth's orbit and on to the surface of the moon.
>
> He and Armstrong had only been on the lunar surface for a
> few minutes when Aldrin made the following public statement:
> "This is the LM pilot. I'd like to take this opportunity
> to ask every person listening in, whoever and wherever they may be, to
> pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours and
> to give thanks in his or her own way." He then ended radio communication
> and there, on the silent surface of the moon, 250,000 miles from home, he
> read a verse from the Gospel of John, and he took communion. Here is his
> own account of what happened:
>
> "In the radio blackout, I opened the little plastic
> packages which contained the bread and the wine. I poured the wine into
> the chalice our church had given me. In the one-sixth gravity of the
> moon, the wine slowly curled and gracefully came up the side of the cup.
>
> Then I read the Scripture, 'I am the vine, you are the
> branches. Whosoever abides in me will bring forth much fruit.. Apart from
> me you can do nothing.
>
> I had intended to read my communion passage back to
> earth, but at the last minute [they] had requested that I not do this.
> NASA was already embroiled in a legal battle with Madelyn Murray O'Hare,
> the celebrated
> opponent of religion, over the Apollo 8 crew reading from
> Genesis while orbiting the
> moon at Christmas. I agreed reluctantly.
>
> I ate the tiny Host and swallowed the wine. I gave thanks
> for the intelligence and spirit that had brought two young pilots to the
> Sea of Tranquility . It was interesting for me to think: the very first
> liquid ever poured on the moon, and the very first food eaten there, were
> the communion elements.
>
> And of course, it's interesting to think that some of the
> first words spoken on the moon were the words of Jesus Christ, who made
> the Earth and the moon - and Who, in the immortal words of Dante, is
> Himself the
> "Love that moves the Sun and other stars."
>
> WOW!!!!
>