Skyrockets

Was it only fifty-one years ago today when those astronauts walked on the moon? Seems like light year ago when the whole world waited with baited breath to see this culmination of all our endeavors in space beginning with the Sputnik in 1957. The intervening years of space exploration have had their ups and downs.

The most tragic moment for us earthbound observers was that explosion of the Challenger right after its launch in 1986, ending the lives of all seven of the crew members and putting a halt to any future launch for over three years. Not only did it force us to rethink our rocket science, the failure to launch raised larger questions about our space programs altogether.

What haunts me to this day about this tragic incident seems like some uncanny cosmic coincident. When all of this went down, I had been reading a book of daily devotions entitled Through the Year With Thomas Merton. Merton was a Trappist monk and mystic for whom I had great admiration. The entry for the day following the Challenger tragedy, was about mental prayer.

Mental prayer is therefore something like a skyrocket. Kindled by spark of divine love, the soul streaks heavenward in an act of intelligence as clear and direct as the rocket’s trail of fire. Grace has released all the deepest energies of our spirit and assists us to climb to new and unsuspected heights. Nevertheless, our own faculties soon reach their limit. The intelligence can climb no higher into the sky. There is a point where the mind bows down its fiery trajectory as if to acknowledge its limitations and proclaim the infinite supremacy of the unattainable God.

But it is here that our “meditation” reaches its climax. Love again takes the initiative and the rocket “explodes” in a burst of sacrificial praise. Thus love flings out a hundred burning stars, acts of all kinds, expressing everything that is best in humanity’s spirit, and the soul spends itself in drifting fires that glorify the Name of God while they fall earthward and die away in the night wind.

Not only did that reading for that day send shivers down my spine, it hit some nerve that went clear to my heart and soul. While it was just a coincident, these different experiences coalesced into a sum that was much greater than the parts, creating a kind of spiritual synergy. Merton had died in 1968, and this collection of his works had just been published in the fall of 1985, five months before the rocket’s dreadful demise. Mysterious would be understatement.

How can we ever forget where we were when that first rocket left the launch pad or when that astronaut took that step and leap for us all on the lunar surface just fifty-one years ago? We were mesmerized by those magic moments on a small screen in our living rooms and dens as we all virtually lifted off toward the stars “expressing everything that is best in humanity’s spirit.”