"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth God said, 'Let there be lights in the vault of heaven to divide day from night, and let them indicate festivals, days and years. Let them be lights in the vault of heaven to shine on the earth.' And so it was. God made the two great lights: the greater light to govern the day, the smaller light to govern the night, and the stars. God set them in the vault of heaven to shine on the earth, to govern the day and the night and to divide light from darkness. God saw that it was good. Evening came and morning came: the fourth day."
     (excerpted from Genesis I, 1)

"What a waste." I overheard someone behind me say the words following the announcement of the loss of the space shuttle Columbia. "I know," her friend joined in, "those poor people." To which the first person replied, "I don't mean the people, I mean the space thing. The whole thing is a waste."

I didn't turn around I figured I just would have said the wrong thing; which is what I wanted to say. Instead, I got up and took a short walk to clear my mind. What came to mind was Joe Morales. The Space Program is not a waste. Joe Morales is the best example I know of this.

Joe and I were as close to Nerds as our Bronx neighborhood could produce. I was torn between Film and Medicine, and shared Joe's interest in the Space Program. Joe was more focused; as far back as I remember, he always wanted to be an electrical engineer ... then an Astronaut. He was always the more creatively colorful of us two as well.

One science fair long ago, I designed a working multistage rocket. Joe covered a leather glove with a fine steel netting that was in turn connected to two massive capacitors charged by a bank of batteries on his belt. The netting was designed to discharge a gizzilion volts on contact with Dwayne Smith's jaw.

Dwayne, a local bully, had tried to move in on one of Joe's girlfriends, and so became the object of his fevered imagination. I barely got a couple of nods for my rocket. Joe was getting fives and pats on the back from Mr. Klein, our Physics teacher. He couldn't stand Dwayne either. Dwayne's reputation as a master douchebag crossed all manner of ethnic, social and religious lines.

Joe and I would study, and do our homework together at night, at the handball court in a park by the projects. There was a streetlight right behind the courts that gave us all the light we needed. Papo Figueroa, a local drug dealer that dealt out of the park always made sure we were safe and left alone.

Papo wasn't all that altruistic, though. Joe's Mom was letting Papo bang her in return for free dope, which she used to help her forget about the drunken beatings she was getting from Joe's dad. If the bastard got tired of beating on her, there was always Joe. Beaver Cleaver's family this was not, and Joe wanted distance. He got it when he made it into a Florida college, a hundred bucks in his pocket from Papo - a world away from the Bronx. Just the way he wanted it.

It's been many years since I last saw Joe Morales. Papo gave Joe protection, but he didn't give him inspiration. Neither did his Heroin addicted mother, or his s--t of a father. What inspired Joe's thirst for science came from something closer to heaven, the Space Program.

We would finish our homework and sit in the twilight of that handball court, looking up at the few stars that could make their way past the city's haze and light pollution, and talk, and plan, and hope. From the early 60's, each rocket that took off from Cape Canaveral took us along in spirit, and blasted us that much closer to our dreams and little else mattered.

In March of our last year in High School, Pioneer 10 took off and, as usual, took us up with it. Talking about its mission on the night of its launch, that deep space probe took Joe and me away from all the poverty and craziness that far too often confronted us.

Looking back, I've often wondered how Joe and I wound up the way we did. The only other friends we had that made it out of the Bronx only managed to get as far as Riker's Island. Admittedly, despite my not having two cents to rub together, my mother's strength of character was enough to overcome our shared adversity and act as moral support for both of us; and then some.

But Joe! He had nothing. Joe had nothing at all, that is, but his dreams; dreams fed by the reality of something far away called NASA. Dreams that, with every rocket launch, boldly went where no junkie, whore, mugger, beating bastard drunk of a father, beating pig of a cop, or beating freakin Dwayne Smith had ever gone before.

And I was privileged to share his dreams. We were listening together, and dreaming of walking together with him, as Neil Armstrong's voice crackled from the moon. It was one small step for a man, but it embodied a giant leap of faith for two kids from the Bronx.

But I think it was the night Pioneer 10 took off, just two months from our exit from High School, and our entrance into a reality of self-determination, that heralded our final flight into fantasy. After that, fantasy had nothing to do with it. After that night, we knew we had to gird ourselves with the lessons of all those school years, and all the lessons we learned in the streets, to shake off our earthly bonds and rise up by ourselves, for ourselves, and (although we didn't know it as such) seek to touch the face of God.

Armstrong's voice was still reverberating in our ears when Pioneer 10 took off almost 3 years later. We still listened for the stuff that fed our dreams, but by that time we were speaking with a voice of steely determination, a determination not to end up like almost everyone else we knew.

But on January 22nd, 2003, almost 31 years after Joe and I celebrated its voyage to the stars, Pioneer 10's electronic voice finally fell silent. At the time, Pioneer 10 was 7.6 billion miles from Earth. Joe was just as far, wherever he may be. But it didn't matter. Wherever he was, I knew he had made it. In my mind, I prefer to believe that Pioneer 10 is simply observing an eternal moment of silence for those lives that were lost in Columbia's lost, but far from wasted.

I have seen truly wasted lives. I have seen young boys from my youth, flush with vitality, strength and vigor, grow into destitute human monsters festering behind bars. I've seen the most beautiful and brightest of little girls, blossom first into drug addiction, then prostitution, then devastation and death from HIV.

Yet to so many who had nothing in the absolute, the Space Program offered inspiration and a hope that eluded them in the earthly sewer that engendered them. I have seen truly wasted lives. But I've also seen kids reach for heaven and, in the process, rise to touch the soul-nurturing face of God.

Truly, my thought after those horrible words I initially heard following the loss of Columbia was that I was alone in my belief. But I wasn't. The words many Americans prayed after the loss of the space shuttle reflected something of Joe's dreams, and were a tribute to him as well.

The pastor, the Reverend David Waller, called the trail of smoke from the shattered spacecraft a "glistening tear across the face of the heavens." The Reverend Mike Weaver of the All Saints Evangelical Lutheran Church in Columbus, repeated the words President Reagan used to comfort the nation after the 1986 explosion of yet another space shuttle, Challenger, "They slipped the bonds of Earth to touch the face of God."

And maybe that's what It's all about. What it was all about for Joe and me as well. With those rockets long ago, our hearts and dreams weren't ascending to some nebulous haven that mysteriously sheltered us from our troubles. Instead, they were bringing us closer to the bosom of a loving God, a heavenly Father, that provided us with a direction little else in our environment, and nothing else for Joe, could have given us.

Many people cried as they watched an interview taped shortly before the mission, in which Columbia commander Rick Husband said being an astronaut was not as important as "trying to live my life the way God intended me to. To be a good husband ...a good father." Wherever he is, I know that Joe would listen to those words and nod in an agreement that no one else could fathom.

Heavenly Father, how great your name throughout the earth!
I look up at your heavens, made by your fingers,
at the moon and stars you set in place, and wonder --
what are we that you should spare a thought for us,
we children of man that you should care for us?
 
Yet you have made us little less than gods.
 
You have crowned us with glory and splendor,
made us lord over the work of your hands,
and set all things under our feet;
your wonders, all within the reach of our hands and ingenuity,
and your love, always within the reach of our hearts and minds.

Contributed by Jose A.
Published Monday March 3, 2003
Week 14 of Liturgical Year B