When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.

"But you tell me

over and over and over again my friend

Ah, you don't believe

we're on the eve of destruction."

-Barry McGuire

" When you've seen beyond yourself then you may find

peace of mind is waiting there

And the time will come when you see

We're all one and life flows on within you and without you."

-George Harrison

Forty years ago, in 1968 I was fifteen years old.

It was a year I will never forget, and it was dark enough to see the stars and so much more.

I was preoccupied with all of the things any fifteen year old would be such as surviving high school, chasing girls (not yet quite certain what to do if I caught one) and having fun with my friends.

This time of relative innocence in a young mans life was lived out against the horrifying backdrop of a year that was a frantic bloody vortex of war, violence, assassination and stupefying change that would leave the world stunned and confused. The societal hangover would last a decade. It was called the Seventies.

Only the year before, The Beatles had launched Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and the summer of love. Now they would write of Revolution and Helter Skelter as seen through glassy eyes.

The world had spun out of control and truly, many believed we were on the eve of destruction .


Yet, before the year was out three wise and very brave men- modern magi a quarter of a million miles from home- would deliver a Christmas gift and an epiphany which for many was as precious as the first. A few moments of crystalline clarity that at least briefly changed the whole world and how we viewed ourselves.


What horrific events could have shaped such a year?

The Whole World Was Watching

A few of the key events from the long lamentable catalog of 1968:

• North Korean patrol boats captured the USS Pueblo, a US Navy intelligence gathering vessel and its' 83 man crew on charges of violating the communist country's territorial limit. The crisis would dog the US Foreign Policy team for 11 months.
• The North Vietnamese launch the TET offensive at Nha Trang. Nearly 70,000 North Vietnamese troops take part in this broad action taking the battle from the jungles to the cities. The offensive carries on for weeks and is seen as a major turning point for the American attitude toward the war. The US Embassy in Saigon is taken and held for over 7 hours.
• General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, a South Vietnamese security official is captured on film executing a Viet Cong prisoner by American Photographer Eddie Adams. The Pulitzer Prize winning photo becomes yet another rallying point for anti-war protesters.
• Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated. Riots break out in major cities nationwide.
• President Lyndon B. Johnson announces he will not run for nor serve another term as president if elected.
• US ground troops from Charlie Company rampage the village of My Lai massacring more than 500 civilians from infants to the elderly.
• The Soviet Union invades Czechoslovakia with tank brigades and over 200,000 Warsaw Pact troops to quell the "Prague Spring" rebellion.
• Robert F. Kennedy is assassinated.
• Demonstrators disrupt the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The police beat some protesters unconscious sending at least 100 to emergency rooms and arresting 125.

In the spring, NASA had unexpectedly decided to change the planned mission for Apollo 8.

The original plan had called for a flight which would test the Lunar Lander in low earth orbit in advance of the expected moon landing the following summer.

The Grumman Company which was building the lander was behind schedule and the LEM was not going to be ready for the Apollo 8 mission.

Instead, NASA planners decided on a new and radically different mission: fly to the moon and orbit. In one Hail-Mary pass they would make history and beat the Russians.

Apollo 8, the first manned mission to the Moon, entered Lunar orbit on Christmas Eve, December 24, 1968.

That evening, the astronauts, Commander Frank Borman, Command Module Pilot Jim Lovell, and Lunar Module Pilot William Anders did a live television broadcast from Lunar orbit in which they showed pictures of the Earth rising over the lunar horizon.

It was a vision that just blew us all away. This tiny fragile blue marble suspended in the blackness of space like a terrarium in a closet- maybe God's third grade science project. Lightning bugs in a jar.

That night no one felt they were Captain of their destiny- merely deckhands on a life raft.

Lovell said, "The vast loneliness is awe-inspiring and it makes you realize just what you have back there on Earth." They ended the broadcast with the crew taking turns reading from the book of Genesis.

William Anders:

"For all the people on Earth the crew of Apollo 8 has a message we would like to send you."

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.

And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light

And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness."

Jim Lovell:

"and God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.

And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

Frank Borman:

"And God said, Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.

And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters he called Seas: and God saw that it was good."

Borman then added, "And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you- all of you on the good Earth."

Of course, Apollo 8 returned safely to earth and we returned to the business of beating ourselves to death in earnest. If only for a short while, on that Christmas Eve forty years ago we shared the rarest of visions: our precarious place in the universe.

Like the original Epiphany it is remembered too seldom and the lesson is often lost.

It was a year and a night I will never forget.