Re-Entry

I was born on a Monday and the following Sunday was my first visit to church. The habit that began on my sixth day of life, would continue through my 21st year. The church became my community. It was my family, my home and my social center. It was where I could find all the people I couldn't live without. Then I moved away. I’ve spent the last few years in college. Having lived without a church, having lived a hundred miles away from the structure that defined me, I wonder how it will be when I go back. In just a few weeks I'll be graduating. I'll be moving back home. And that will mean a re-entry into my world of faith.

I feel as if I've been on the moon, with only a sixth of the earth’s gravity to keep my feet on the ground. I’ve changed my perspective on faith. It’s not a matter of losing it. My faith has never wavered. Faith, like gravity, is a constant. But the magnitude of that faith has lessened. Soon I’ll be making my way back, on the verge of starting that fiery drop back into the atmosphere. The re-entry will be fast and turbulent. Falling like so much metal and plastic back into the gravity well. And for a while afterward, my legs will be weakened from the low-g environment of college life where your only concern is your own well being. But eventually, that physical adjustment will get made. I’ll remember that life is a shared experience. Eventually I'll relearn how to act like an inhabitant of my blue and green church world. Won't I?

Did Pete Conrad ever feel like this? As he stepped off that tiny craft 240,000 miles from home? Did he ever feel like having stood here, in this place, he could never truly go back? I imagine there was a sign there to greet him, like the ones on the road leading into little towns in Idaho. “Welcome to the Moon. ‘A great place to see the world.’ Population: You.” And that's how I feel. Like it's just me. The only inhabitant of an entire celestial body.

I can only imagine what Captain Charles “Pete” Conrad, USN, saw as he shuffled through the eons old dust sprinkling the surface of his new satellite. But I know what he saw when he looked up into the sky, with no atmosphere to distort the view. What he saw was home. The earth, so small he could close one eye, hold up a thumb and make it disappear. A pure, unfiltered view of all life, all at once. What better place to find God than the surface of the moon, where there's 300 degrees difference between night and day, and where the magnitude of his creation can be seen in a way no human eye ever has before.

So maybe that's what I remember seeing now. Standing away, looking back. Despite the isolation of life alone at college, I could turn back and see, really see for the first time, everything that made life worth living. Maybe it won’t be like it was. I can forget about canned air and dried ice cream. I can move on from piles of dirty t-shirts and ramen noodles four nights a week. But I’ll never forget that view.