LOOK AT LIFE FROM A HIGHER ELEVATION

Let me talk to you about the value of seeing life from an elevated vantage point. The Apollo Space program changed humanity’s view of human life. Humankind had never seen our home planet the way we were able to see it through camera lenses from 384,403 km or 238,857 miles away. There were several images of earth that became the most duplicated images of all time. Our magnificent planet shining like a blue marble in the sea of our galaxy of cold stars. On the way to the moon, we discovered earth. We began to think differently about our planet. The American poet Archibald MacLeish wrote, “brothers who know now they are truly brothers, riding on the Earth together.” Rusty Schweikart, an Apollo astronaut aboard Apollo 9, space walked and spent many minutes looing at our earth from which he had come, and the experience triggered an epiphany for him. He thought of the insanity of humans fighting over borders that were invisible to him from up there. Thousands of people in the Middle East killing each other over an imaginary line that you cannot even see. He wished he could take both sides in a conflict into space to see the whole earth so beautiful, and say, “'Look. Look at it from this perspective. Look at that. What's important?'"