Memory of the ages

Editor’s note: December’s Letter of the Month was originally published Dec. 16.

For those of us fortunate enough to have families to share experiences, most have enough holiday memories to warm us all year long. But for the family of mankind around the world, in modern times one memory should stand out for all who were living at the time.

Fifty years ago, in late December 1968, Apollo 8 was in orbit around the moon. Using President Reagan’s words some years later, it contained the first people to ever slip the surly bonds of Earth. No threesome had ever been more alone, tethered to Earth only by their radio and the good wishes of those left behind. On Christmas Eve in their tiny spaceship, Frank Borman, Bill Anders, and Jim Lovell read the first 10 verses of the Book of Genesis.

You don’t have to be religious to appreciate the near-poetry of the reading, nor could anyone hearing it live, as I did, ignore the context. Here were three humans, farther from Earth than anyone ever before, looking at their little blue ball of a home and relating a beautiful, lyrical story of how it came to be. “And God said, Let the waters under heaven be gathered unto one place and let the dry land appear; and it was so.” That, interspersed with white clouds, is what our astronauts saw.

Their experience and their spectacular photograph of earthrise over the moon, both shared with millions back on Earth, gave us all new perspective.

From 240,000 miles away, people don’t exist. Nor do cities, or national borders, or anything else constructed by humans. Just this little blue ball hanging in the midst of the endless celestial background, a fact that should be both humbling and inspirational to us all. A holiday memory for the ages for all humanity. DENNIS BARRY

Little Rock