Thinking about the Moon

Besides being our nation's 233rd birthday, this weekend also marked the 40th anniversary of the moon landing. Rob and I watched a program on NASA TV that was made in the years following the event and it was very interesting. They showed experiments that NASA did to figure out how to build the astronauts' suits and then shows the women sewing the suits together. They also played the voices of people responding to the moon landing. Some of the people were amazed, others were appalled at the cost. Some felt it was man's duty to explore the moon, others were concerned we had overstepped our boundaries.

The whole thing left me with two things to think about:

One quote that stuck out to me was from the narrator. He was describing a typical day of an astronaut en route to the moon and talked about how they had 8 hours for scheduled sleep. Then he said, "Time to work, time to rest, time to reflect." And it struck me that people's lives aren't really like that any more. It's more: time to work, time to rest, time to play...and not that play doesn't have its own value, but if reflection has been shut out at entertainment's expense, I don't think the exchange has been a fair one.

The second thought was inspired by a series of clips played to contrast the earth and the moon - the moon "silent, empty, and dusty" (to quote Caleb's picture book about the moon) and the earth - noisy, full, and wet! Some of the earth clips showed the planet has a whole or space views of mountains and deltas, while others showed cells, insects, animals, and people. I don't know if the point was intentional, but it really highlighted the contrast between big and little. Is it more impressive that the universe is so big? Or that the human body seems so infinitely complex? Which is actually the greater frontier?

Personally, I feel overwhelmed when I think of the great night sky going on and on and on and us being such a speck by comparison. I think that's why the caterpillars have been so fascinating to me this year. I like that as small as they are, they have so much detail and how they change so completely. I want to ask the question, if the universe is so big, why is it even important that butterflies be beautiful?



This is the butterfly we released on Friday - flying away.