i don't know why the columbia disaster has touched me so much. perhaps because it's so recent.
a few things i've seen recently:
from the texas episcopalian:
"The Rev. Vincent Uher, retired priest in the Diocese of Texas, wrote a special verse to be added to the hymn "Eternal Father, strong to save," often known as the Navy Hymn. Uher said he used the passage in Isaiah that President George W. Bush quoted and also the poem that President Ronald Reagan quoted after the Challenger disaster.
"O God who names
the starry host
and by whose love
not one is lost,
who stretched thine arms
wide to the sky
from cross to heav'n
so death would die
Oh care for those
who traverse space,
Embrace them now
who touch thy face."
and perhaps the poem referenced above...
High Flight
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swing
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air ....
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew -
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
This high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
-Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee, Jr., RCAF
Posted by kendra at March 4, 2003 11:28 PM