Amazement Break 2 — “Hello, World.”
April 16, 2026
“Hello, world,” read the heart-tugging New York Times caption on Sunday, April 5, under a photo of the beautiful blue, white, and Sahara dust red globe of Planet Earth. The photo was taken by the Artemis II astronauts, who splashed down in the waters of home on April 11, after a historic ten-day mission, which took them around the far side of the moon and deeper into space than anyone has gone before.
"As we get close to the nearest point to the moon and the farthest point from Earth — as we continue to unlock the mysteries of the cosmos — I would like to remind you of one of the most important mysteries there on Earth, and that's love,” reported Artemis’s pilot Victor Glover.
As usual, when space exploration captures attention, some people complain that the money could have been spent on needs back home. I strongly disagree. The human soul yearns to explore the unknown. We want to delve into wonder to see if we can find explanations there. And when we do, we discover that not only doesn’t the wonder fade, it glows ever brighter as it seeds new questions.
Artemis’s crew of four struck me as perfect ambassadors for our time. They brought purpose, scientific knowledge at its best, human awe, and eloquence back to Earth in a period of grave social, political, and climatic crises.
“Planet Earth, you are a crew,” said Mission Specialist Christina Koch. She described Earth as a “lifeboat hanging undisturbedly in the universe” and suggested that all Earth’s inhabitants are part of one crew, that in our diversity we share basic needs and a responsibility to care for one another.
Before embarking on the flight, Canadian Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen went on a traditional vision quest ceremony at the invitation of Anishinaabe Elder David Courchene III.
Standing in my local coop on a Sunday morning and looking at that front page photo of the orb of Earth, with its blue waters and white clouds, I was moved to tears. “Hello, world.”
May we all take a moment to step back from our fear, grief, and outrage and gaze into the sky. And as we do so, may we remember that we, too, were there in that photo. Tiny, invisible specks we were, but absolutely present, every single one of us on that beautiful globe at the instant the astronauts snapped their photo.
I am offering these occasional AMAZEMENT BREAKS in hopes that they will give us a little break from the conditions that weigh so many of us down.
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