Blue Marble

The Artemis II space mission returned to Earth with a splash near San Diego on Friday after completing its journey to travel around the “dark side” of the moon. The astronauts sent us exquisite photos of Earth from space. A precious blue sphere with a cotton candy coating of wispy clouds. It is an odd feeling, very hard to describe, looking at these photos knowing the astronauts were in their little capsule hurtling through space seeing our planet and all of humanity below - apart, but whole - knowing that all of human history happened on that single, spinning, orbiting, irreplaceable home.

NASA

All of human history and all of human ingenuity! We have used our ingenuity to build bombs, invented and crafted for the sole purpose of destroying themselves and everything around them in one go. And we have also used our brilliance to build solar panels that capture the energy of the sun anywhere that it is shining, from a hut in Africa to a high-rise in London.

We build airplanes to carry people to see their loved ones on other parts of this beautiful marble the astronauts gazed at through their tiny window. And we also build airplanes to carry bombs to destroy what we have created.

We are but little ants, microscopic ants - our planet, an improbable, seemingly impossible, oasis in a sea of black nothingness. Humans have been part of its story for a blink of a cosmic eye. And yet, without perspective, we are mired in our humanness, our greed, our fear and dislike of others who are different, our love and all the things we do in the name of it. We are inconsequential and a miracle in the same divine breath, unable to zoom out to take away all the details that keep us distracted from the gift of this life.

From space, we are all invisible. You would never know that a deranged narcissistic lunatic is sending humanity physically, economically, and psychologically into turmoil with every bomb and tweet he drops. You would never know how ugly the human race can be. You cannot see the hoarding, the competition, the oppression, the illusion we have created of safety in separation.

From space, we are invisible. We are not even there if you didn’t know it already. From space, you cannot see the roads, the prisons, the factory farms, the hospitals, the temples, the libraries full of books, the poetry, the art. You cannot see all the ways we have contributed to this story. You cannot see every hand that planted a seed, taught a child, painted a wall, helped a neighbor, wrote a law, built a bridge, held the dying, welcomed the newborn. You cannot see the uncountable, unrecorded acts of ordinary people who made civilization out of love and necessity and the belief that humanity is worth it.

From space, you cannot see how hard we try to love each other. How we have the capacity to make another’s heart take flight with joy and also to pierce it with an unfillable hole of sorrow.

You cannot see how I can walk my dog in peace on a beautiful day in my safe neighborhood while others lie awake in the dark, fearing the sounds of bombs overhead. In space, you cannot see how troubled I am in my peace, knowing peace is conditional on where you live on the marble we call home.

From space, you cannot see the planes that defy gravity to carry people. You also cannot see the ones that carry bombs.

From space, you cannot see the unimaginable diversity of life found in the blue, green, and brown on our piece of cosmic significance - the life with wings and scales and antennae and horns and leaves and flowers and fruit, and the diversity in the life that wears clothes and speaks over 7,000 languages and writes novels and builds cathedrals and cultivates a thing called hope.

And yet.

From space, you cannot see any of this, and somehow that is the point. The overview effect, that shift astronauts describe when they first see Earth whole, isn’t about what disappears. It’s about what remains. Something is still there, even from that impossible distance. Something warm and fragile and worth protecting. Humanity loses its boundaries and becomes more sacred and elemental - a single, breathing, impossible miracle.

I sat and looked at those photos for a while, feeling a bit out of my body. Somewhere in that stillness, my smallness stopped feeling like a problem. If all of this - every war, every act of love, every cathedral and every bomb - fits on a single blue sphere small enough for an astronaut to imagine holding in the palm of their hand, then maybe the most radical thing any of us can do is to handle this miracle of life with care. If I am nothing against the scale of the universe, then I am also free - free to simply care for what is right in front of me with as much love and attention as I can muster. The marble spins. And somehow, improbably, we are here for it.

In space, the astronauts were in a spaceship called Orion, and also in space, while they looked back, we were on a spaceship called Earth.

In my book, Radical Wellness: Pathways to a Healthy Body, Mind, and Planet, I offer this meditation. Feel free to comment with your reflections!

Take a moment: Sit for a few minutes of meditation. Here is an exercise to try in your place of stillness. After you have been sitting for a while with your eyes closed and you feel grounded with your breath, imagine that you begin floating above your body. You are looking down on yourself. Then imagine that you float higher into the air. You become a smaller part of the whole scene down below. What do you see? Then float up even further so you are above your city or town. You are still down there somewhere, but now you just see buildings and land formations. Next, allow your body to float out into space so that you are looking down on Earth. You are still there somewhere, a tiny pinpoint on the blue and green marble, one of billions of people trying to live a life for the time that they have. Now imagine yourself out deep in space where the Earth looks like just another speck of light. But, everything you know of life happened on that tiny dot, not just your life or your ancestors, but everything you have ever learned from anyone who decided to investigate or record as history. The rise and fall of the dinosaurs, the Roman Empire, Ice ages, the construction of Egyptian pyramids, the Great Wall of China, and New York skyscrapers, people creating beautiful civilizations and killing each other in senseless wars. No matter how tiny, you are a part of it all. How did this exercise make you feel? Please take some time to write about it in your journal.

To join the Radical Wellness Book Group (starting 5/4), click here!

Photo by Fausto García-Menéndez on Unsplash