And it was so.

Through this broadcast and this photograph, I think we can begin to taste the kind spiritual experience astronauts must have as they travel to distances, and perspectives, so few have known. As John Glenn said, "To look out at this kind of creation out here and not believe in God is to me impossible. ... It just strengthens my faith. I wish there were words to describe what it's like."



This ultimate scientific endeavor does not answer the questions religion seeks to answer; it brings humans into a close encounter with their own smallness, the Earth's beauty, and the vastness of the cosmos. Faced with these truths, is it any wonder that some astronauts turn to religion? Some surely find comfort in the words of secular philosopher-scientists like Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson. But others will find that the ancient religions of Earth have some greater power, some deeper resonance, when they have traveled safely so far from their homes. Astronaut James Irwin put it this way: "As we got farther and farther away it diminished in size. Finally it shrank to the size of a marble, the most beautiful marble you can imagine. That beautiful, warm, living object looked so fragile, so delicate, that if you touched it with a finger it would crumble and fall apart. Seeing this has to change a man, has to make a man appreciate the creation of God and the love of God."

This is in part the sentiment Buzz Aldrin relays in his 2009 memoir as he recounts how he took communion in the minutes between when he and Neil Armstrong became the first humans on the moon's surface, and when Armstrong set his foot down on the dust. Aldrin says he had planned the ceremony as "an expression of gratitude and hope." The ceremony was kept quiet (un-aired) because NASA was proceeding cautiously following a lawsuit over the Apollo 8 Genesis reading, but it proceeded with a tiny vial of wine and a wafer Aldrin had transported to the moon in anticipation of the moment (personal items were strictly restricted by weight, so everything had to be small). He writes:

During those first hours on the moon, before the planned eating and rest periods, I reached into my personal preference kit and pulled out the communion elements along with a three-by-five card on which I had written the words of Jesus: "I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me, and I in him, will bear much fruit; for you can do nothing without me." I poured a thimblefull of wine from a sealed plastic container into a small chalice, and waited for the wine to settle down as it swirled in the one-sixth Earth gravity of the moon. My comments to the world were inclusive: "I would like to request a few moments of silence ... and to invite each person listening in, wherever and whomever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours, and to give thanks in his or her own way." I silently read the Bible passages as I partook of the wafer and the wine, and offered a private prayer for the task at hand and the opportunity I had been given. Neil watched respectfully, but made no comment to me at the time.

He continued, reflecting:

Perhaps, if I had it to do over again, I would not choose to celebrate communion. Although it was a deeply meaningful experience for me, it was a Christian sacrament, and we had come to the moon in the name of all mankind -- be they Christians, Jews, Muslims, animists, agnostics, or atheists. But at the time I could think of no better way to acknowledge the enormity of the Apollo 11 experience than by giving thanks to God. It was my hope that people would keep the whole event in their minds and see, beyond minor details and technical achievements, a deeper meaning -- a challenge, and the human need to explore whatever is above us, below us, or out there.

I think in there, Aldrin gets at the heart of religious experience in space: This achievement is so momentous, so other-worldly (nearly literally), that the rituals and words of one's own religion become, as he says, "deeply meaningful." Other astronauts of other faiths -- Jewish and Muslim -- have also brought their religious practices into orbit, resulting in some thorny questions at the intersection of theology and practicality. For example, how often should a Jew who experiences 15 sunrises and 15 sunsets every 24-hour period observe the sabbath? Every seventh "day" -- which means every 11 hours or so -- for just 90-ish minutes? When Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon was on the Space Station, rabbis decided he could just follow Cape Canaveral time. Unfortunately, Ramon was killed during the space shuttle Columbia's re-entry, so we don't have his post-mission reflections on what that experience was like. At least in anticipation of his journey, he said that though he was not particularly religious, observing the sabbath in space was important because as a representative of Jewish people everywhere and the son of a Holocaust survivor, bringing those traditions into space, into the 21st century, represented a spirit of continuity. "I'm kind of the proof for my parents and their generation that whatever we've been fighting for in the last century is becoming true," he told the BBC.