…big words

Forty-five years ago today, in a spindly Wallace-and-Gromit-esque contraption with less computing power than the simplest smartphone, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong descended from the command module towards the lunar surface. (Those wishing to recapture the moment can follow the tweeted timeline from the Smithsonian Air and Space museum here).  Even during the brief descent, Neil Armstrong was still puzzling over what he should say when he got there. He had been overwhelmed with suggestions – from the Bible, from Shakespeare and from the fertile imaginations of well-wishers across the globe. In the end he summarised billions of dollars of research and development and aeons of longing with the simplest phrase:

“That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind”

The sound quality was dreadful, the pictures on many contemporary television sets was barely visible, and yet those 13 (or 14) syllables captured an epoch.

Whenever preachers feel upstaged by the massive communications budgets and the slick comms agencies round about them, I remind them of this moment 45 years ago. The right words spoken for the right reasons in the right context can last a lifetime.

Image: Wikimedia. commons