The year was 1968.
The Vietnam War was raging. The US was reeling from recent tragedies—J F Kennedy was killed, we saw Lee Harvey Oswald shot in real time on television, Martin Luther King Jr. was gunned down, Bobby Kennedy was assassinated while making a run for the white house, the Apollo 1 module burned in a simulated test, killing three astronauts.
The country was in shock and grief.
Yet three men climbed aboard a flaming rocket and aimed for the moon—an orbit, to prepare for the future landing on the moon. They filmed the famous earth-rise, that incredible blue marble that is us, rising over the moon’s horizon.
We were in awe and it gave this country hope.
And what happened?
Kennedy’s dream materialized. “We will put a man on the moon by the end of the decade and bring him home safely.”
What an affirmation!
In 1969 they did it.
“Have a dream that’s bigger than you can accomplish in your lifetime,” Michael Beckwith told us that Sunday in L.A. Kennedy didn’t live to see the moon landing. Martin Luther King Jr. didn’t see his dream of the day his four little children would one day live in a nation where they would not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
We won’t get it all done, but we will go for it anyway.
Somebody will get it done.
Hope is alive and well and comes riding in on white horses. I saw a woman do it at Cavalia in Dallas Texas. One diminutive woman came streaking into the arena with a whoop that brought everybody out of their seats. She was standing one foot on one horse one on another as the two horses careened down a slope, over a small embankment, and galloped full-out in front of a gaping audience. She stood, knees flexed, taking up the rise and fall of each horse, one rein in each hand. I can feel it now, the weightless feeling, rather like jumping on a trampoline, of a horse racing, half of the time with all four feet off the ground at the same time—rather like a rocket isn’t it?
P.S. Talk about standing in awe, you will if you watch FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON a 12 part HBO series produced and narrated by Tom Hanks. Ron Howard was another producer, their objective was to show people what they had never seen before—behind the scenes of the NASA Apollo Mission. This ought to be required viewing for every red-blooded person. Rent it or buy it, you won’t be sorry.
From home: If you ask BABY D—Oh yes, little Boy D, now 23 months—what he is grateful for he says, “My life.”
