The Shadow Zone on the Other Side of the Moon
But God.
Only he would create a launch window to the dark side of the moon to coincide with the hinge of the Triduum: on the first night of Passover, with the crew circling the moon over Easter Week. With dread for the darkness straddling Maundy Thursday.
You have got to be kidding me.
Physics is about to enforce a silence that the liturgical calendar has been rehearsing for two thousand years.
Artemis II. Mythic, indeed.
The Exodus story and the space program have been in conversation since the Apollo era — “slipping the surly bonds,” the wilderness, the promised land. But a crew flying over the face of the deep in Holy Week, leaving on the night of the first Seder with the words In the beginning hanging in the air — that’s a denser convergence than humans alone could plan.
I heard the formidable NASA astronaut and US Navy Captain Victor J. Glover, Jr. speak at last year’s Fourth of July Renaissance Weekend conference in Banff. I was struck by the humanity of the moment. A Black American astronaut, his wife in the audience, speaking about the danger and singularity of true radio silence. We were in Canada, where one of his three crewmates was born. The room already contained the mission before the mission launched.
These four humans will approach the radio silence of the far side of the moon — the farthest anyone has ever been from Earth — during the holiest silence in the Christian calendar. Holy Saturday is the day of theological silence: the tomb is sealed, the disciples don’t know yet. The crew won’t know if Earth still knows where they are. That’s not a metaphor I even have to reach for. It’s the actual situation.
For 41 minutes, the physical mass of the moon stands between the crew and every person who loves them. Every person, everywhere. Mission Control goes quiet. Families wait. Once the spacecraft slips behind the lunar horizon, the astronauts have to rely on themselves. They are in the Shadow Zone. A Holy Saturday of sorts. Where humanity has only ever entered once before. No guidance systems. Total mystery. Self-reliance. Despair, confusion, disciples in a stupor of grief and disappointment. The family wondering.
Mission Control will not know if the spacecraft successfully navigated the far-side loop until it comes back around the other side and re-establishes its link with Earth — the re-acquisition of connection. When the families of the astronauts who have waited out their proverbial holy Saturday of uncertainty can breathe easier. The resurrection is our collective Re-Acquisition from the shadow zone of Holy Saturday.
Maundy Thursday has always been the most resonant day of Holy Week to me. If I were to go anywhere in Israel, I would go to Gethsemane. The Garden. Maybe it’s the contrast with the Garden of Eden. Maybe it is the gnarled olive trees instead of the lush paradise. Garden of Crushing instead of Garden of Delights. Or maybe it is the anticipatory dread. I’m not sure. But if I were rocketing through space contemplating the greatest separation from Earth a human has ever had, I’d be wondering about the cup myself. The submission. The will. Being selected, but also enlisting. Full power and total lack of agency in one act. On the launchpad. Shaking at liftoff. The expansiveness of space in the confinement of a capsule. Blows my mind. Heavy. And I can only stand it because I already know about the Light that comes after the darkness.
Good Friday — always a strange name — the specific theology of that day: the sheer cosmic force involved so the silence could begin. The silence isn’t absence. It’s the hinge. Humanity was truly in No-Man’s-Land; we’d never been there before. Jesus had never been there either, separated from God.
And yet, he came back. Jesus experienced the first free-return trajectory. The orbital dynamics, the gravitational slingshot, the figure-eight path. Pretty much screams Christ. Quietly.
Orbital mechanics are knowable. The rest is mystery. The presence of God is not transmitted on any frequency physics can measure. The blackout proves nothing. It disproves nothing. The question asked in that silence is the oldest one.
Forty-one minutes is longer than most Good Friday sermons. Shorter than the tomb.
I’ll be praying for Reid, Christina, Victor, and Jeremy on Good Friday. Not because they’re in danger. Because they’re going to find out.
Featured on Aslan Housing Foundation, originally published on Mockingbird.
