John A. Mina­han has writ­ten this week’s fea­tured Friends Jour­nal arti­cle, a nice­ly paced explo­ration that touch­es on per­son­al mem­oir, human mile­stones, cul­tur­al mem­o­ry, and the Book of Genesis:

Now the astro­nauts had used that same rhetor­i­cal strat­e­gy but on a plan­e­tary and even inter­plan­e­tary scale. Speak­ing the words of Gen­e­sis, they sent a mes­sage of heal­ing to a wound­ed world; they expressed a cer­tain cos­mic humil­i­ty about our place in the uni­verse; and, most of all, they shared good­will, jaw-dropping in its sim­plic­i­ty, with “all of you on the good earth.” A moral and exis­ten­tial vision took hold of me in that moment and has nev­er let go. Though I couldn’t have artic­u­lat­ed it as such then, it was a real­iza­tion of orig­i­nal goodness. 

Gen­e­sis: Out­er Space and Inner Light 

Out­er space and Inner Light

Friends Journal