Tranquility Base

I was fourteen and a half when America landed two astronauts on the moon forty years ago. I remember watching the gray, grainy scenes on our old, gray, grainy black and white tv. It was a surreal, fascinating, magical, mysterious, and miraculous. To that moment, it was the greatest and may debatably still be the greatest engineering, scientific feat mankind has produced. I'm not sure young folks really know much about it. It ranks somewhere below iphones and text messaging in their view of wonderful accomplishments. When the lunar module landed Neil Armstrong said, "Houston, tranquility base here, the eagle has landed." They called the area of the moon on which they landed the Sea of Tranquility. They left a plaque on the Sea of Tranquility that read " we came in peace for all mankind." It was so remarkable it was more than some folks could believe so they made up stories about the whole moon landing\walking being a hoax staged by the government in the Arizona desert or on a sound stage in Arkansas. For a few hours, the world virtually stopped to follow the progress of Aldrin and Armstrong. For a few moments the world was "together." It didn't last long. Bullets starting flying again in Viet Nam. Egypt and Israel were rattling sabres soon enough and the USSR was holding its power over eastern Europe. If mankind were going to find tranquility, they'd have to go to the moon. The truth of the matter is that there was a tranquility base on the moon because there is nothing there but a bunch of stinky rocks (moon rocks, moon dust smells like spent gunpowder). The progress came in the Herculean effort to get to the moon and back. Computer advances, communication advances, engineering advances with adhesives, metals, and materials that play into our lives now were made possible by the progress NASA made over forty years ago. For those reasons I hope we can one day go to Mars or where ever and explore it for all its worth. Maybe by then mankind will have figured out that our base for tranquility isn't found on the moon or on Mars or in politics or secured with armies or oil or any other created thing. There is a much closer, deeper space which must be explored. What is there can be terrifying for sure. Yet there is a Guide who knows that tranquility is not something discovered "out there" or landed upon by spacecraft but is created within. Is your heart open to exploration? Terry