Jan Sluijters, Landscape with Full Moon, 1910

FOR MUCH of history, human beings gazed at the moon and saw the grandeur of God. Who but an Artist infinitely superior to any Michelangelo or Titian, could have created such an ornament for the sky, a jewel of changing complexity that sheds its cool-blue light on all?

Now human beings look at the moon and see the sublimity of Man.

A writer for The New York Times feels religious awe (you know, the sort of awe he would never feel for religion) on the anniversary of Apollo 11:

But as a commemoration of the moon landing, that kind of emphasis on our own era’s greater enlightenment falls flat — because what Apollo represents is not goodness but greatness, not moral progress but magnificence, a sublime example of human daring that our civilization hasn’t matched since.

More and more people believe the moon landing was a staged production. I don’t really know, but I wouldn’t put it past the stage managers. Leaving that issue aside, I would like to suggest that Apollo 11 really wasn’t that big of a deal. It has not done anything positive for human nature.

When it comes to the moon, I’ll take poets over astronauts. They understand that the wonder inspired by the moon is very different from technological progress. As Robert Frost said in his “Freedom of the Moon:”

I’ve tried the new moon tilted in the air
Above a hazy tree-and-farmhouse cluster
As you might try a jewel in your hair.
I’ve tried it fine with little breadth of luster,
Alone, or in one ornament combining
With one first-water start almost shining.

I put it shining anywhere I please.
By walking slowly on some evening later,
I’ve pulled it from a crate of crooked trees,
And brought it over glossy water, greater,
And dropped it in, and seen the image wallow,
The color run, all sorts of wonder follow.

Yes, all sorts of wonder come from the moon.

I’m not putting down scientific investigation, only suggesting it has serious limits (especially when it is faked). Science describes matter, it doesn’t explain. It can’t explain why the mysterious glow of the moon often seems the shadow of an outstretched, loving hand. Moonlight, shining through the window like a spotlight meant for you, suggests the supernatural. And we don’t need astronauts to appreciate its mysterious depths and comprehend it.

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