Mass on the Moon

A fascinating anecdote from the annals of NASA history for you fellow sci-fi-heads, courtesy of the Bible Belt Blogger.

BibleBeltBlogger » Blog Archive » A celestial Communion — a lunar Eucharist

A little-known fact about the first moon landing. Astronaut Buzz Aldwin celebrated the Lord’s Supper on the surface of the moon on July 20, 1969, drinking wine from a small silver chalice. [MORE]

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Thanks for the fascinating anecdote. I’m a Muslim, but I find this discovery inspiring, and–while by this I don’t mean to disparage people of secular persuasions–if one must interpret this one way or the other I must say that I find the idea of someone in that position engaging in private worship gives me *more* confidence in their maturity and psychological fortitude to handle whatever comes their way in an incredibly perilous and utterly unfamiliar environment.

I don’t have a specific reference, but my understanding is that there has been a least one Muslim astronaut who performed salat (i.e., the 5 daily prayers) while in orbit. Of course, Salat involves prostrating oneself towards Mecca (which normally requires the use of a compass or analyzing the the location of the sun in the sky). I imagine it would be a lot simpler to face Mecca from the Moon!

I left out the a problems arising from being off the planet’s surface, since there is of course no time of day in space. As in Christian monastic practice, the daily prayers are tied to times of the day (though a comparable situation can be encountered even on Earth, for example in the Artic Circle with its extremely long “days”; in such cases the sun’s position is ignored and the prayer schedule of a location under “normal” conditions is observed).

A belated Happy Easter to my Christian readers and serendipitous visitors.

P.S. This is neither here nor there, but this blog post’s title reminds me of Gil Scott Heron’s timeless classic of biting–and today perhaps even more warranted–political commentary and satire in verse, “Whitey on the Moon”.