Earthrise, Earthset

It is all about- always about- perspective. Our opportunities to see our world, our universe, in a more expansive way than our ancestors did, is a precious gift. For many, it causes an uncomfortable and precarious walk on the narrowing path between mythology and reality.

But that is not to say that mythology is not true! Mythology is always the human response to explaining that which is a Mystery in ways that are comprehensible. We need to make some sense of a thing before we can step toward it. And the tools we have to make sense of anything change over time. It does not mean our eyeballs and imagination were lying to us and the rest of the world when humans comprehended the Earth as a Woman, into which seeds were placed, which grew. That image served its purpose for millennia and  gave rise to the agronomy and biological sciences which feed the world today.

This video of Earth, from the view of a flyover of the Moon, reminds us how easy it would be, living on the Moon, to have a Moon-centric view of the universe, and to regard ourselves, as Moon dwellers, as the center of that universe. That would of course give us a skewed view of Mother Moon and Sister Earth, and cause us to walk sideways and uncertainly into a future which demands that we see ourselves as a “part” of the whole, rather than “on top of” everything else.

(She really is a wonderful world, isn’t She? Oh, yeah.)