“From a distance the world looks blue and green
And the snow-capped mountains white.”
I don’t know if the iconic picture of “Earthrise” taken from Apollo 8 on December 24, 1968 inspired Julie Gold to write “From a Distance” in 1985. But, I always think of that image when I hear it.
From a distance the ocean meets the stream
And the eagle takes to flight
The picture and other aspects of Apollo 8’s mission are the focus of today’s #stampoftheday because they provided much-needed rays of hope at the end of a terrible year marred by assassinations and riots in the US, a pre-Olympics massacre in Mexico City, the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, and a host of other tragedies.
“From a distance there is harmony
And it echoes through the land.”
And then came Apollo 8, the first manned spacecraft to leave the earth’s orbit and to travel 10 times around “the dark side of the moon.” I think (but I’m not sure) that I was among the millions of people who anxiously waited for the craft to emerge from the its radio silence on the other side of the moon, and that we were among the approximately one billion people who watched a live broadcast from the craft on Christmas Eve 1968.
“It’s the voice of hope, it’s the voice of peace
It’s the voice of every man.”
That appearance was a late addition to the mission, which was do carry out tasks and experiments needed to prepare for a planned moon landing. In a 2019 American Experience documentary on the race to the moon, Frank Borman, Apollo 8’s commander recalled, “We were told by NASA,…’you’ll have a TV appearance on Christmas Eve. You’re going to be seen by more people than anybody, witnessed by more people than anyone has ever seen before, and you’ve got to be prepared.’ And I said, ‘Well, what do you want us to do?’…And the answer came back…’Do something appropriate.'”
“From a distance we all have enough
And no one is in need”
But what to say? A friend of Borman’s advised that “any direct message…reflecting on Christmas Eve, conditions on Earth, and the way you feel about it at the moon, could get awfully sticky; it would be difficult not to sound pretentious or patronizing,” according to a recent smithsonianmag.com article by Teasel Muir-Harmony.
“There are no guns, no bombs, no diseases
No hungry mouths to feed”
In the documentary, astronaut Jim Lovell recalled, “we tried new verses to “The Night Before Christmas” and to “Jingle Bells” but nothing really seemed to be appropriate.” And then the wife of another of Borman’s friends asked “Why don’t you begin at the beginning?” and read the opening of Genesis. Borman shared the idea with his crewmates; they agreed; and the passage was typed on fireproof paper and added to Apollo 8’s flight plan.
“From a distance we are instruments
Marching in a common band.”
In the film, Lovell explained that they knew that while “almost the whole world would be listening to us on Christmas Eve…the whole world does not consist of Christians.” Bill Anders, the third astronaut on the mission, added that the astronauts hoping reading well-known verses from Genesis be “a significant statement, that not just Christians and Jews would understand, but that all people, Buddhist, Hindu or atheist would react to in a deep and moving way.”
“Playing songs of home, playing songs of peace,
They’re the songs of every man.”
On Christmas Eve, just before their last turn around the far side of the moon, the astronauts began their broadcast by described what they saw. “The vast loneliness up here of the Moon is awe inspiring,” Lovell said, “and it makes you realize just what you have back there on Earth.” Then, taking turns, they read the first ten verses of Genesis, ending with Borman saying “And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called the Seas: and God saw that it was good.” Then he added, “from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas – and God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth.”
“God is watching us, God is watching us
God is watching us from a distance.”
Hard-core engineers at NASA’s space center in Houston choked up as did legendary broadcaster Walter Cronkite, who, in the American Experience documentary, remembered, “my first reaction was, ‘Oh, this is a little too much, this is a little too dramatic.’…I might even have thought ‘this is a little corny.’ But by the time Borman had finished reading that excerpt from the Bible…I had tears in my eyes. It was…just the right thing to do at the moment.”
“From a distance you look like my friend
Even though we are at war”
And in a front-page essay in the next day’s New York Times, Archibald McLeish wrote: “To see the earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold – brothers who know now they are truly brothers.”
“From a distance I can’t comprehend
What all this war is for.”
In contrast, the iconic picture was a spontaneous act. Indeed, at the time, Anders told Borman not to take the picture because it wasn’t “scheduled.” However, historian Andrew Chaiken not only has shown that this was a joke but also made it clear that Anders, not Borman, took the picture. The sight of the earth, Anders later told Chaiken, “was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Totally unanticipated. Because we were being trained to go to the Moon…It wasn’t ‘going to the Moon and looking back at the Earth.'”
“From a distance there is harmony
And it echoes through the land”
Speaking 50 years later, Lovell said when he first saw the earth emerge over the lunar horizon he thought: “I arrived on a planet with a proper mass to have the gravity to retain water and an atmosphere – the essentials for life. I arrived on a planet orbiting a star at just the right distance to absorb that star’s energy.”
“From a distance there is harmony
And it echoes through the land.”
He paused, then added: “In my mind, the answer was clear: God gave mankind a stage on which to perform. How the play ends is up to us.”
“It’s the hope of hopes, it’s the love of loves
It’s the heart of every man
It’s the hope of hopes, It’s the love of loves
It’s the song of every man.”
Be well, stay safe, be a voice of hope and a voice of peace. And Merry Christmas.