Posted on 02/03/2003 3:57:47 PM PST by knighthawk
HOUSTON - Here they call it a "local story." The whole world is watching, but in Houston -- where a statue of a lunar astronaut adorns the departures hall of the airport -- the space program is a local story.
The loss of the space shuttle Columbia is not only local because more than 16,000 people work at the nearby Johnson Space Center, which houses Mission Control. It's local because it was these Texas skies that were scarred by the shuttle as it broke up on Saturday morning.
"Shuttle Debris: If Found Call Police." So read the electronic road signs on the freeway by the airport.
I arrived Saturday night from Rome for my brother's wedding. Just after landing in Philadelphia, the pilot announced that the Columbia had been lost "somewhere over east Texas." I connected to Houston, and arrived in the middle of a local tragedy. Priests and ministers were up late Saturday night and early Sunday morning, reworking our sermons knowing that in the pews would be people who worked at Johnson Space Center, who perhaps knew the families involved.
In Building 2 at the NASA campus is the auditorium where they hold press conferences. On the wall of the lobby is written in large letters: "The Johnson Space Center: Where Ideas Become Realities."
That's the work of the scientist and the explorer -- the two noble vocations which together define the astronaut's job description. To make ideas into reality is what has been done here since the space program began.
The challenge we faced in the pulpit on Sunday morning was the opposite: to go from the reality to the ideas. That's the work of philosophers and priests, and it has been going on since man first looked into the sky and wondered who it was that moved the stars.
"The Creator who names the stars also knows the names of the seven souls we mourn today," said President George W. Bush, acknowledging that the deepest questions raised by the Columbia would not be answered by any forensic investigation.
Astonishing successes like the U.S. space program can give rise to the attractive idea that with enough wit and enough work success is always possible, that every obstacle can be overcome, that every problem can be solved, that suffering itself can be conquered. Then reality intrudes.
Reality came crashing spectacularly into the Texas sky on Saturday morning as a reminder of an older idea, namely that great achievements require great sacrifices, and are not untouched by great suffering.
Other ideas were written across the sky in bright streaks. Awe before the human ingenuity that makes it possible to fly 113 shuttle missions and only have two accidents. Humility too, knowing that "Mission Control" is always an aspiration, never a completely true statement of fact. And wonder before the fragility of human life, whether it be in the faraway stratosphere or the local street, knowing that at any moment the miracle of life itself can be extinguished.
Local scientists and shuttle experts said that what was most chilling about Saturday's accident was the sound they didn't hear. Just before the shuttle lands, it breaks the sound barrier, and the sonic boom can be predicted within a matter of seconds. When they didn't hear the boom, they knew something had gone terribly wrong.
The silence from the heavens was echoed in the silence from the preachers. I, like so many others I suppose, said what the Christian always says when facing such a tragedy -- that we don't know why it happened, why the God who set the stars in their courses did not guide the Columbia safely home.
Yet the silence of the heavens is not the silence of God, for such tragedies speak to us of courage, and awe, and wonder, and yes, humility. We have lost the scientific data the Columbia astronauts collected, but their lives bravely lived teach us anew about the deeper truths that we cannot measure.
Space exploration has always been charged with theological meaning. The Apollo astronauts chose to read from the first chapters of Genesis when they radioed back to Houston from their first orbit. We sense intuitively that in looking at Earth from the heavens we somehow see ourselves as God sees us.
That is only partly true. Orbiting the Earth we only see the big picture. We do not know the names of souls as God does.
We mourn astronauts in a way that we do not mourn other explorers. How many generations of seafarers lie in their watery graves, unknown and unmourned? We mourn the astronaut because he does in the material world what we all yearn to do in our spiritual lives; to go beyond all that belongs to this world and to see things as God sees them, to unlock the mysteries of the universe and to be bathed in the light of stars which never dim.
President Ronald Reagan, in perhaps his most moving speech, quoted John Magee, saying that the Challenger crew had "slipped the surly bonds of Earth to touch the face of God."
Texas is a church-going state. And this local story was played out most importantly yesterday in the churches, where we prayed that the Columbia crew may now indeed see the face of God, the same God who Dante called the "Love that moves the sun and all the stars."
This is so powerful and profound. I hope that all of you I have pinged will read the entire article because I thought of each of you and believe you all would see how much truth he has packed into this relatively short sermon and how much the world needs to reflect on it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.