Tuesday, 7 April 2026, 11:48 am
Opinion: Martin LeFevre – Meditations
A bright sun, low in the western sky, streams through
a gap in the trees above the houses. A mourning dove coos
nearby, and is answered by another in the distance. A jay
squawks.
There isn’t a flutter of the new
leaves, and it’s blessedly quiet. A little dog barks, and
a voice calls out. The day ends.
Intrinsically
the earth is a sacred place. However many planets and moons
with life there are in the Milky Way, our planet is surely
one of the most beautiful.
There’s been a lot of
schlock from cable news hosts talking about the Artemis II
mission – how much “awe” (a religious feeling) they
felt at the power of the rocket at launch, and how the
mission is “unifying humanity.”
But for older
folks who remember the Apollo missions, the emotionless
masculinity and America-centered nature of those moonshots
has gratefully given way to a more gender-balanced and
Earth-centered vibe from the Artemis crew.
However
even for those whose worldview was deeply informed by
literally the world view of the moon missions, reality
intrudes.
As one pundit wrote, “There can be no
point other than prestige in sending humans to the moon,
which is why more than 50 years have passed since they last
went there. Robots can perform all we need in space.
Returning the Iranians to the stone age is a different
matter.”
There were exceptions to the testosteronal
Apollo missions, such as with Mike Collins, the guy who
orbited in Columbia while Armstrong and Aldrin made the
first footprints on the moon, and who was labeled as the
“loneliest man” in the world.
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In his droll way,
Collins put that canard to rest by writing, “I am alone
now, truly alone, and absolutely isolated from any known
life. I am it.” But he said that he enjoyed the solitude
and felt happy, “the opposite of lonely.”
Collins
also spoke eloquently about how everywhere the Apollo 11
astronauts went on their triumphal world tour, “people
said, ‘We did it,’ not, ‘You did it’ or ‘America
did it.’” That made planting the flag on the
“magnificent desolation” of the moon all the more
ridiculous.
Fifty-four years since the last Apollo
mission, I’m glad girls and boys are excited about this
slingshot around our lifeless sister planet (as the moon
would be called from afar, since it’s almost the size of
Mercury). But it’s hard to get excited about a mission
that replicates the flight of the ill-fated Apollo
13.
Especially since Artemis II’s main claim to fame
in a “free-return trajectory” is taking it just a few
hundred miles further than Apollo 13, and getting no closer
than 4000 miles (6500 km) to the moon. Even Apollo 8,
carrying the first humans to leave earth’s gravitational
sphere, orbited a tantalizingly close 60 miles (about 100
km) from the moon’s surface.
Artemis II’s
astronauts are oohing and aahing at the moon’s dark side
from 6500 km away before returning to a world completely
eclipsed by man’s darkness. By the time they get back, if
Trump gets his way and the entire world is at war, they’ll
probably wish they could have kept going.
The crew is
doing its best to make people feel better on earth. “You
are on a spaceship called Earth that was created to give us
a place to live in the universe,” intoned Victor Glover,
as he spoke from biblical belief on Easter.
It was a
dim echo of the spine-tingling sensation Apollo 8’s crew
gave people on earth by taking turns reading parts of
Genesis as they circled the moon on Christmas Eve 1968.
Without mentioning the Bible, the passages spoke to all
humanity.
Glibly describing the universe as “a whole
bunch of nothing,” Glover struck a jarring and
contradictory note even from a biblical perspective, since
according to his belief system, “God created [both] the
heavens and the earth.”
From a scientific
perspective, how could the earth and all the life on it
emerge from “a whole lot of nothing” anyway? As
incomprehensibly vast as it is, the universe gave birth to
the earth, so it must be conducive to life.
“Trust
me, you are special,” Glover proclaimed. “In all of this
emptiness, whether you believe in God or not, this is an
opportunity to remember where we are and who we are. And
that we are the same thing, and we got to get through this
together.”
Fine sentiment as that is, there’s a
lot to unpack, as philosophers say, in his little sermon.
Insisting that the earth was “created to give us a place
to live in the universe” is straight out of the Christian
creation myth, a fairy tale that parents tell children when
they ask why we’re here.
We must grow up as humans.
There is no separate deity that placed the earth in its
orbit like a marble on a game board. There is an inseparable
mystery and immanent intelligence suffusing the cosmos, but
humans aren’t a “special creation.” And we’re
rapidly destroying this beautiful planet, crashing the
climate and decimating the creatures with which we share the
earth.
The intriguing comment in Glover’s remarks
intimates at what’s between the lines: “We got to get
through this together…” That says a lot, without
actually saying what “this” is, much less why it
is.
Even from the bygone belief in the special
creation of humans, people don’t ask (or merely give pat,
childish answers to the question), why does darkness rule
the world?
There is no supernatural answer in
theological fabrications of a cosmic battle between good and
evil. There’s only our lack of self-understanding as
humans.
The next day, the early morning sun is
already warming the air, but the damp, green grass under
bare feet feels cool and thick. It’s good to stand on the
ground in bare feet when the seasons permit. It anchors one
to the Earth.
We don’t need to go into space
to see and feel the beauty of the earth. The entire earth
and all humankind are in one’s backyard if one knows how
to look and listen.
Martin
LeFevre
Scoop Contributor
Martin LeFevre is a contemplative and philosopher.
His sui generis “Meditations” explore spiritual, philosophical and political questions relating to the polycrisis facing humanity.
lefevremartin77@gmail