Skip to main content

Nice Rocks



Today is a big day for me personally. It is the 40th anniversary of my first conscious memory... The Apollo 11 moonlanding. Others have tried to tell me that I only "remember" it because it has been on TV so often subsequently, but no... I remember the TV coverage vividly... It was not "the greatest week in history since the Creation..." as Richard Nixon hyperbolically claimed at the time... But it was certainly a significant summer in my life, because, sadly, the next conscious memory that I have is of the TV coverage of the riots surrounding the Civil Rights marches in August that year... One was an image of hope... The other a portent of things to come... The sad thing is that the latter has shaped my life and the subsequent history of Northern Ireland more than the former, and all too soon the hope wrapped up in the Moonlandings petered out into the cynicism of the latter years of the Nixon regime and the Vietnam war...


But what we sometimes forget is that the moonlandings were not all greeted with unalloyed joy... there were many protests against them, notably by Christians, both of the conservative ilk, who thought that to travel to the moon was against the created order of things... and others from a social justice perspective who thought that the money could be better spent...


My musical hero, Larry Norman, captured the latter in his song Readers' Digest from the album "Only Visiting this Planet" (a song which he later, admittedly, derided, however as being too topical and cynical... specifically in its reference to Paul McCartney) where he said:


"We need a solution, we need salvation
let's send some people to the moon to gether information...
... they brought back a big bag of rocks
only cost $13 billion!
Must be nice rocks!"


It now appears that recent talk of moon and mars landings will be shelved because of lack of money in a post-credit crunch world... So there won't be any more "nice (expensive) rocks" for a while, though whether cost savings will be spent on addressing the needs of the poor is dubious.


Meanwhile, our screens in Northern Ireland have been filled with scenes of rioting again... with more nice rocks and nice petrol bombs!


I hope that this does not herald a new era of hopelessness here...

Comments

gadgetguy said…
Everyone knows that the real reason for not returning to the moon was the discovery that it was not, in fact, made of cheese. The first landing, even though they brought back proof, (in the form of rocks), was not enough to convince the ground crew. This is why multiple trips were taken with different crews. But ultimately, the facts could not be denied, and the pursuit of cheese on the moon was abandoned.

Popular posts from this blog

A Woman of no Distinction

Don't often post other people's stuff here... But I found this so powerful that I thought I should. It's a performance poem based on John 4: 4-30, and I have attached the original YouTube video below. A word for women, and men, everywhere... "to be known is to be loved, and to be loved is to be known." I am a woman of no distinction of little importance. I am a women of no reputation save that which is bad. You whisper as I pass by and cast judgmental glances, Though you don’t really take the time to look at me, Or even get to know me. For to be known is to be loved, And to be loved is to be known. Otherwise what’s the point in doing either one of them in the first place? I WANT TO BE KNOWN. I want someone to look at my face And not just see two eyes, a nose, a mouth and two ears; But to see all that I am, and could be all my hopes, loves and fears. But that’s too much to hope for, to wish for, or pray for So I don’t, not anymore. Now I keep to myself And by that

Psalm for Harvest Sunday

A short responsive psalm for us as a call to worship on Harvest Thanksgiving Sunday, and given that it was pouring with rain as I headed into church this morning the first line is an important remembrance that the rain we moan about is an important component of the fruitfulness of the land we live in: You tend the land and water it And the earth produces its abundance. You crown each year with your bounty, and our storehouses overflow with your goodness. The mountain meadows are covered with flocks and the valleys are filled with corn; Your people celebrate your boundless grace They shout for joy and sing. from Psalm 65

Anointed

There has been a lot of chatter on social media among some of my colleagues and others about the liturgical and socio-political niceties of Saturday's coronation and attendant festivities, especially the shielding of the anointing with the pictured spoon - the oldest and perhaps strangest of the coronation artefacts. Personally I thought that was at least an improvement on the cloth of gold canopy used in the previous coronation, but (pointless) debates are raging as to whether this is an ancient practice or was simply introduced in the previous service to shield the Queen from the TV cameras, not for purposes of sacredness, but understandable coyness, if she actually had to bare her breast bone in puritan 1950s Britain. But as any church leader knows, anything performed twice in a church becomes a tradition. All this goes to show that I did actually watch it, while doing other things - the whole shooting match from the pre-service concert with yer wumman in that lemon-