Our blue planet 50 years ago

Access to Emergence Magazine’s film Earthrise has been lingering in the mail on my computer awaiting a time when I had space to view and consider its importance.

“Earthrise tells the story of the first image captured of the Earth from space in 1968. Told solely by the Apollo 8 astronauts, the film recounts their experiences and memories and explores the beauty, awe, and grandeur of the Earth against the blackness of space. This iconic image had a powerful impact on the astronauts and the world, offering a perspective that transcended national, political, and religious boundaries. Told 50 years later, Earthrise compels us to remember this shift and to reflect on the Earth as a shared home.” (Emergence Magazine)

Thoughts and feelings range over a wide spread as I sit today Monday September 16, 2019 watching and listening to this remarkable film created from the accidental documentation of a significant event in the history of my time on earth. Some members of the crew of Apollo 8 resisted photography on the mission, their orders did not include capturing images of the earth, they were only to photograph the moon and her craters in detail. The iconic image was the result of a spontaneous response to the beauty when they viewed earth rising over the moon’s horizon.

The astronauts’ reflections on their emotional responses to the blue planet image, on their hopes for the impact this image might have on the people who inhabit that blue planet, their dreams of a time when we might come together as earth inhabitants regardless of the boundaries we have placed between countries and peoples, landed hard on my heart as I thought of the current reality of our ecological and political environments. I listened to these three men and wondered what they might say now to the current President of the United States. How they might applaud Greta Thunberg’s clear speaking about the climate change we are now living in. What they might say to the leadership of the political parties electioneering in our own country, Canada, about the need to come together united in the common imperative that the survival of life as we know it on this blue planet is no longer a certainty.

With all this I simply find myself wanting to share this remarkable documentary widely and encourage others to take the thirty minutes needed to watch it and perhaps share in my experience of deepening love for our blue planet and my desire to reach out across all our artificial boundaries sharing that love in action to preserve her for the seven generations yet to come.