On the Moon!

Subject: On the Moon (I never knew this)




 How many of you knew? I will have to admit...I didn't.
 Too bad this type news doesn't travel as fast as bad.

 Communion on the Moon: July 20th, 1969 Jul 19, 2009
 Forty years ago today two human beings changed history by walking on the
 surface of the moon. But what happened before Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong exited the Lunar Module is perhaps 
 even more amazing, if only because so few people know about it

 I'm talking about the fact that Buzz
 Aldrin took communion on the surface of
 the moon. Some months after his return,
 he wrote about it in Guideposts magazine.
 And a few years ago I had the privilege
 of meeting him myself. I asked him
 about it and he confirmed the story to
 me, and I wrote about in my book
 Everything You Always Wanted to Know
 About God (But Were Afraid to Ask).
 
The background to the story is that
 Aldrin was an elder at his Presbyterian
 Church in Texas during this period in his
 life, and knowing that he would soon be
 doing something unprecedented in human
 history, he felt he should mark the
 occasion somehow, and he asked his pastor
 to help him. And so the pastor
 consecrated a communion wafer and a small
 vial of communion wine. And Buzz Aldrin
 took them with him out of the Earth's
 orbit and on to the surface of the moon. 

He and Armstrong had only been on the
 lunar surface for a few minutes when
 Aldrin made the following public
 statement: "This is the LM pilot. I'd
 like to take this opportunity to ask
 every person listening in, whoever and
 wherever 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." He then ended radio
 communication and there, on the silent
 surface of the moon, 250,000 miles from
 home, he read a verse from the Gospel of
 John, and he took communion. Here is his
 own account of what happened: 
 
"In the radio blackout, I opened the
 little plastic packages which contained
 the bread and the wine. I poured the wine
 into the chalice our church had given me.
 In the one-sixth gravity of the moon, the
 wine slowly curled and gracefully came up
 the side of the cup. Then I read the
 scripture, 'I am the vine, you are the
 branches. Whosoever abides in me will
 bring forth much fruit.. Apart from me
 you can do nothing.'

 I had intended to read my communion
 passage back to earth, but at the last
 minute [they] had requested that I not
 do this. NASA was already embroiled in
 a legal battle with Madelyn Murray
 O'Hare, the celebrated opponent of
 religion, over the Apollo 8 crew
 reading from Genesis while orbiting the
 moon at Christmas. I agreed
 reluctantly. I ate the tiny Host and
 swallowed the wine. I gave thanks for
 the intelligence and spirit that had
 brought two young pilots to the Sea of
 Tranquility .. It was interesting for
 me to think: the very first liquid ever
 poured on the moon, and the very first
 food eaten there, were the communion
 element And of course, it's interesting to think
 that some of the first words spoken on
 the moon were the words of Jesus Christ,
 who made the Earth and the moon - and
 Who, in the immortal words of Dante, is
 Himself the "Love that moves the Sun and
 other stars."

 WOW!!!!