The Spirit of Artemis II
Art by Arthur Lidov
(Also, last week for Early Bird Pricing on Gospel of John! Not just for Bible nerds and exvangelicals.)
Before April 1st did anyone even know NASA was launching a mission?
I sure didn’t, being overly-preoccupied with what appears to be the real return of the Antichrist and his Beasts of Land and Sea. And no, I’m not talking about Iran.
I was on the treadmill at the gym going my Cindy pace of 3.2 mph and shifting my attention between sportsball on one TV, the Drew Barrymore show (she has a show?) on the other, and finance news on a third.
Over the next 15 minutes they all switched to desk anchors with 20-minute countdowns in the corner of the screen. I couldn’t hear the words but they all seemed to be talking about NASA based on the pictures they were showing.
Wait a sec, I thought. There’s a spaceship launching? In the next 15 minutes?!
“Flower” by Wendy Montero (Oh my gosh check out her vision for women and the Earth at the bottom. It’s incredble and I’m obsessed)*
I texted my brother - who had gone to spacecamp as a kid - to ask if they were watching in Vancouver.
Jack said “I am now” and we watched as the countdown ended and the spaceship launched. I could not believe how much fire and smoke there was!
As the shuttle succesfully moved higher and higher with cheering crowds on the ground and exhuberant TV hosts narrating the event, I heard one anchorman say something I’ll never forget.
He said, “Well there she goes folks, and I think we all really needed a reason to look up.”
Tears came to my eyes and I went outside and looked up to the sky. My brother texted “See ya in a week. bring back some cheese,” and they were off.
The results of those remarkable 10 days in space have brought a flood of hopecore to all my social media. People expressed relief, joy, excitement, delight, and the feeling that maybe it’s not all going to be violent, incompetent shit for the the forseeable future.
I literally wept anytime I saw anything related to the Artemis II mission; naming the moon crater, the Nutella, the group hugs, the tears, and the incredible textbook landing. The photo below stayed with me the most (as well as this whole Instagram carousel on “competency porn”):
There she is, the Earth. And there she is, an incredible woman who came from the Earth, supported by incredible women and men back on Earth.
I wish we could all get into space and see Earth like this, our planet as she really is with no borders and covered in water everywhere you look.
Looking at this photo reminded me of the “overview effect” reported by almost evey astronauts who’s ever gone into space. Just by seeing our pale blue dot of a spaceship people report an overwhelming awe and profound shift in the way they even conceptualize of humanity.
I’ll let Christina Koch speak in her own words:
“We will explore. We will build ships. We will visit again. We will construct science outposts. We will inspire — but ultimately, we will always choose Earth. We will always choose each other.”
Many of us know that no matter what we do to this planet we will always choose each other and we will always choose Earth.
It feels like a really hard choice right now even and especially for those of us who love the planet itself, let alone all the beings on it. The grief is just immense beyond immense.
But Artemis II and her crew still happened in the midst of all of it. My friend and incredible Shakti Tantra teacher Hanna Williams has been asking lately, “How much complexity can we hold?”
It’s a question that’s been breaking my heart open right now as I realize we don’t really have a choice.
We must hold all this complexity; the Earth from space, the bombs on childrens heads, the ancient teachings still guiding us today (Yes, that’s my Gospel of John plug for the blog, sign up!), and through it all we must keep loving the Earth.
I hope that spaceship broke your heart open too. It’s easy to close our hearts down these days but we need to love each other now more than ever.
EARLY BIRD PRICING ENDS WEDNSDAY!
Eight live weekly sessions start Wednesday June 3rd. Recorded for later viewing. EARLY BIRD PRICING $185 thru April 15th. REGULAR PRICING $245
MODULE THREE: SIGNS OF SPIRIT
John never uses the word miracle. He uses sēmeion, or sign, a word that means a signal pointing to something greater.
In this session we move through all seven signs of the Gospel: water into wine, healing at a distance, liberation from chronic limitation, feeding from scarcity, presence in chaos, the courage it costs to see clearly, and love stronger than death.
Each sign is a lesson in how Spirit moves through ordinary life and carries a practical principle you can begin using immediately. In this session we learn the principle of Jesus’ healing message to us: reality is symbolic, and you already have the capacity to read it.
Students will gain:
A working understanding of all seven signs with their historical, Greek, theological, and metaphysical dimensions
The foundational skill of seeing places and patterns as signs pointing toward deeper spiritual truth
Use of the seven signs as a complete spiritual curriculum moving from awakening to resurrection
Confidence in your capacity to perceive divine movement in ordinary circumstances without requiring extraordinary events
*Wendy Montero’s series is described like this: Her "Mexican Desert Series" envisions a transformative sanctuary for migrant women traveling across the U.S.-Mexico border. Rather than depicting the desert as a dangerous threshold between two difficult choices, Wendy reimagines this harsh landscape as a place of refuge—a sanctuary where women fleeing violence need not continue their journey northward nor return to what they left behind. This work invites viewers to question established narratives about migration and consider how spaces of transition might become destinations of safety and belonging.
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