Monday, July 20, 2009

Moon Walk Anniversary

I remember watching the footage of this over and over the sumer I was 11 years old. Amazing stuff. There is alot of press about it today, on the 40th anniversary of the mission to the moon. I had never read this before, thought it interesting, and am sharing:


But the first things a man ate and drank on the moon were a Communion wafer and a thimbleful of wine.

Buzz Aldrin was a Presbyterian church elder at the time. The pastor of Webster Presbyterian in suburban Houston near the Johnson Space Center gave him a home Communion kit to take to the moon. It contained the wafer, a tiny vial of wine and a thumb-sized silver chalice.

NASA had urged Aldrin not to celebrate the sacrament publicly. Atheist activist Madelyn Murray O'Hare had already filed suit because the Apollo 8 crew read from the Book of Genesis for all the world to hear as they orbited the moon on Christmas Eve the year before.

So instead, Aldrin got on the radio shortly after the moon landing and asked everyone listening to observe "a few moments of silence" to think about what had just happened and to give thanks in their own way.

Aldrin's way was to turn off the microphone and administer Communion to himself. Armstrong watched silently as Aldrin poured the wine, read a few lines of scripture from a card, then ate the wafer and drank from the tiny cup.

It really must have been awe inspiring,

Normal Girl




2 comments:

emma said...

that is a really cool story!

votemom said...

yeah, like they really landed on the moon.