{"id":2552,"date":"2023-04-21T07:36:24","date_gmt":"2023-04-21T11:36:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=2552"},"modified":"2023-04-21T07:37:22","modified_gmt":"2023-04-21T11:37:22","slug":"the-visited-planet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2023\/04\/21\/the-visited-planet\/","title":{"rendered":"The Visited Planet"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to this reflection as a podcast, <\/em>click here<\/a>.
 
The picture above is beautiful.  And also disquieting. 
 
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin are hurtling toward the surface of the moon in the Apollo 11 Lunar Module on July 20, 1969.  Within a few hours, Armstrong will take his \u201cone small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.\u201d 
 
No one suspected at the time that the Apollo program would help trigger the modern environmental movement.
 
The \u201cEarthrise\u201d image in this and many other pictures captured from spacecraft orbiting the moon \u2013 especially those taken eight months earlier by Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders \u2013 seemed to confirm, as never before, that our planet is a special place. 
 
In the words of Space.com journalist Mike Wall, the Earth appears as \u201ca lonely and fragile outpost of life suspended in an endless, inky-black void.  That new perspective jolted many people awake and lit a fire under others, helping the nascent environmental movement gain cohesion and momentum.\u201d
 
The very first Earth Day arrived the following spring, on April 22, 1970.  About 20 million Americans \u2013 an impressive 10% of our population at the time \u2013 rallied and marched in an effort to motivate political leaders.
 
Good things began to happen.
 
Before the end of that year, the Nixon administration authorized the creation of the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) and passed a number of environmentally focused laws, the likes of which had never been seen before.  The Clean Water Act came in 1972 and the Endangered Species Act a year later. 
 
Best of all, Earth Day became (appropriately enough) a global event beginning in 1990.  It\u2019s estimated that more than 1 billion people in 193 countries will participate in some kind of Earth Day activity tomorrow.
 
That\u2019s not a bad record of accomplishments for a few color snapshots of our home planet. 
 
But there\u2019s another reason the picture you see above is like no other.  Every human being who has ever lived \u2013 taking into account the many different resting places of the dead \u2013 is contained in this single photograph.
 
Except for two. 
 
Michael Collins, the third Apollo astronaut, remained behind in the Command Module and snapped this picture.
 
Then there\u2019s that other person who is missing, even while somehow being everywhere in the picture.
 
Jesus of Nazareth invested something like three decades on that \u201chalf-Earth\u201d in the photograph.  Which means that ours isn’t just a home worth saving. We are citizens of the visited planet.  Jesus’ followers, who today comprise about one-third of the world\u2019s population, claim that he\u2019s still alive.  And fully human.  And dynamically active.  Even at this moment. 
 
The present form of his body transcends what we associate with material existence.
 
The book of Acts tells us that Jesus ascended into heaven, in full view of his disciples, 40 days after the resurrection (see Acts 1:1-11).  This wasn\u2019t a way of saying that Jesus is now physically up there somewhere amidst the clouds.  Rather, it affirmed that at a particular moment he decisively left the sphere of human history \u2013 at least for now. 
 
The word that best describes his current reality is \u201cmystery\u201d \u2013 which is another way of saying we really don\u2019t have the words or the categories to make sense of everything. 
 
What we do know is that his ascension means he\u2019s momentarily disappeared from the picture.
 
Except\u2026
 
No picture is ever really complete without him.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to this reflection as a podcast, click here. The picture above is beautiful.  And also disquieting.  Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin are hurtling toward the surface of the moon in the Apollo 11 Lunar Module on July 20, 1969.  Within a few hours, Armstrong will take his \u201cone small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.\u201d  No one suspected at the… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2553,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[216,553],"class_list":["post-2552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-earth-day","tag-environmental-stewardship"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2552"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2552\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2555,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2552\/revisions\/2555"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}