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Word and Sacrament on Another World


Well, here's the first of my promised placeholder posts, and by this time we should be negotiating the final leg of our epic trek to our Brittany holiday hideaway... Not quite as epic as the trek to the moon and back by Apollo 11 40 years ago this week.

Apparently the crew of Apollo 8 had stirred up a "separation of church and state" hornets' nest when they quoted from Genesis 1 in their orbit of the earth, so for the momentous first landing on the moon the crew were warned that there were to be no Biblical quotations. Buzz Aldrin, however, an Episcopalian, smuggled a personal communion set in his suit in order to celebrate a silent communion on landing on the moon, and later claimed that he had written out and left the words of Psalm 8 on the moon's surface.

Here's my take on that Psalm (I've posted it previously here):

BOTH: O LORD , our God, your name is honoured in all that you have made!

Voice 1: Beyond the boundless reaches of space

Voice 2: Higher than the heavens where the angels offer you their symphony of worship;

Voice 1: While here on earth even nursing infants gurgle in adoration

Voice 2: Toddlers shout songs of praise

Voice 1: Silencing the cynical sneering of the enemy

Voice 2: Drowning out the godless chatter of the age.

Voice 1: When I stare into the heavens above,I see your fingerprints all over the sky…

Voice 2: I see jewellery of the finest of workmanshipwith the moon mounted in an almost infinite setting of stars…

Voice 1: And I feel so small…

Voice 2: I sense the expanse between heaven and earth,

Voice 1: Creator and creature…

Voice 2: And I wonder why you bother with me?

Voice 1: Why you would look once, never mind twice, in my direction?

Voice 2: Yet I am always on your mind

Voice 1: You care for me night and day…

Voice 2: You have made me little less than a god…

Voice 1: The crown of all creation,

Voice 2: A jewel that brings joy to your heart.

Voice 1: You charged me with looking after your handiwork

Voice 2: You laid everything at my feet:

Voice 1: All creatures great and small;

Voice 2: domesticated and wild

Voice 1: The flocking birds, and shoaling fish

Voice 2: and the whales whose songs of praise circle the seven seas.

BOTH: O LORD , our God, your name is honoured in all that you have made!


© David Campton 2004




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