Shellseeking from the Southeast Texas Gulf Coast

Dancing with the stars...literally By Brenda Cannon Henley Senior Correspondent to The Examiner This week's column is dedicated to the memory of Torchy Salter whose favorite parting to all was, "Wishing you the moon and stars." She's enjoying them now for herself. Buzz Aldrin, famed space pioneer, is best perhaps known to this generation as a beginning contestant on this year's Dancing with the Stars TV show. At 80 years of age, this true-to-life legend is a role model for seniors to get out there and do it...and enjoy doing it. Our school children know that forty years ago two human beings changed history on July 20, 1969 by walking on the surface of the moon. But what happened before Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong exited the Lunar Module is perhaps even more amazing, if only because so few people know about it. Buzz Aldrin took communion on the surface of the moon. Some months after his return, he wrote about it in Guidepost magazine. Others have told the story since that time, but it is still significant for all Christians to remember that this legend of our time thought it important to do. Aldrin was a dedicated elder at a Presbyterian church in Texas during this period in his life, and knowing that he would soon be doing something unprecedented in human history, he felt he should mark the occasion somehow, and he asked his minister to help him. And so the minister consecrated a communion wafer and a small vial of communion wine. Buzz Aldrin took them with him out of the earth's orbit and on to the surface of the moon. He and Armstrong had only been on the lunar surface for a few minutes when Aldrin made the following public statement: "This is the LM pilot. I'd like to take this opportunity to ask every person listening in, whoever and wherever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his or her own way." He then ended radio communication and there, on the silent surface of the moon, 250,000 miles from home, he read a verse from the Gospel of John, and he took communion. Here is his own account of what happened: "In the radio blackout, I opened the little plastic packages which contained the bread and the wine. I poured the wine into the chalice our church had given me. In the one-sixth gravity of the moon, the wine slowly curled and gracefully came up the side of the cup. "Then I read the Scripture, 'I am the vine, you are the branches. Whosoever abides in me will bring forth much fruit. Apart from me you can do nothing. "I had intended to read my communion passage back to earth, but at the last minute [they] had requested that I not do this. NASA was already embroiled in a legal battle with Madelyn Murray O'Hare, the celebrated opponent of religion, over the Apollo 8 crew reading from Genesis while orbiting the moon at Christmastime. I agreed reluctantly." Aldrin said that he ate the tiny host and swallowed the wine. "I gave thanks for the intelligence and spirit that had brought two young pilots to the Sea of Tranquility. It was interesting for me to think the very first liquid ever poured on the moon, and the very first food eaten there, were the communion elements." And of course, it's interesting to think that some of the first words spoken on the moon were the words of Jesus Christ, who made the Earth and the moon and Who, in the immortal words of Dante, is Himself the "love that moves the sun and other stars." The Bible teaches us in Luke 22:19, "As oft as you do this, you do it in remembrance of Me." What a place to remember the Lord Jesus Christ. Brenda Cannon Henley can be reached at (409) 781-8788 or at brendacannohenley@yahoo.com.