There was a moment when the whole Earth was united. This happened when the Apollo 13 astronauts were stranded in space. The whole world was united praying for their safe return to Earth. For those couple of days, we were not identified with any religion, any nationality or any other differences. We were Earthlings praying to whatever God we worship for the safe return of three other Earthlings to return safely to Earth. This was a very special time in human history.

This phenomenon has been described many times. First, John Lennon described this in his famous song “Imagine.” He said in those lyrics to imagine there’s no religion and “imagine there’s no countries.” These things, religion and nationality, are the things that divide us. But before him, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (fourth movement) had a choir singing “alles menchen willen bruder” which is German for “all men will be brothers.” This was based on a poem by the German poet Goethe.

These were men who had a dream of a united Earth where we were just humans looking out for other humans. But that dream manifested itself with Apollo 13, where three humans were trapped in space while all other humans prayed for their safe return to their home planet.

Unfortunately, it takes disasters like Apollo 13 for us to see each other as brothers, as fellow humans. That is unfortunate. Apollo 13 united us for the first time in all of human history. Imagine that for 10,000 years we fought each other, then came together praying for three humans to return safely to Earth. What a moment.

Bill Pirkle, Federal Way