InSight Lander
This illustration shows a simulated view of NASA's InSight lander descending on its parachute toward the surface of Mars.(Photo from NASA/JPL-Caltech)
InSight has landed on Mars!
Much as I’d like to claim a space travel triumph, the InSight in question is a Mars lander belonging to NASA. Like “ET the Extra-Terrestrial,” NASA’s InSight “phoned home” Nov. 26 to say it had landed safely. Online videos showed a roomful of scientists in maroon shirts at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California jubilant at InSight’s safe arrival.
InSight’s two-year mission will be to probe deeper into Martian geology than any explorer has gone before, “to study the deep interior of Mars to learn how all celestial bodies with rocky surfaces, including Earth and the Moon, formed,” according to NASA.gov. By the way, InSight is short for the project’s formal name, “Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport.” (Wonder how long it took them to come up with a name to match the acronym. Or maybe it really was an acronym from the formal name. But I digress.)
The coincidence of names prompted me to consider how the latest Mars lander compares to this online journal. For one thing, we have similar missions. NASA’s InSight will probe Martian geology; United Methodist Insight probes into the church, both within the institution and where the church intersects with society. NASA’s InSight had what its project director called “seven minutes of terror” while scientists waited to see if the lander would reach the Martian surface intact and operational. United Methodist Insight has had seven years of holding open a forum to discern what God wants for the future of The United Methodist Church.
These seven years haven’t been fraught with terror, but they have been at times painful to the point of anguish. Contrary to theologies and philosophies that posit human beings are basically good, our experience sadly has been that humans, including us, are capable of great meanness when fearful or wounded. Our harshest critics frequently cite their own bad experiences with the church as justification for making Insight their whipping boy (or girl). To those folks we say, in earnest, we wish you well. Anytime you want to swap places with us and hang your own foibles and mistakes out in public for all to see, we’ll be glad to make the exchange.
Counterbalancing negative critics there also has been a constant stream of personal encounters, emails, letters and donations from readers who’ve thanked us effusively for what we do. I never cease to be amazed at the depth of people’s gratitude for our daily postings of five or six articles with news and views outside restrictive mindsets. It’s as if Insight offered our thankful readers cool water for their parched throats. The import of such a mission makes a deep impression, akin to the biblical question, “how will they know if no one tells them?”
In a way, NASA’s InSight and United Methodist Insight aim toward similar “undiscovered countries” where the past is giving way to an as-yet-unseen future. The Mars lander seeks to find the commonalities of rocky-planet formation. This online journal seeks the new thing that God is creating amidst human trials and triumphs. Some people find both these objectives enormously threatening; the former challenges ideas about creation, while the latter challenges ideas about God. Nevertheless we persist, drawn by the mission’s irresistible call.
Truly, both “insightful” projects share the same motivation: the urge to expand our understanding beyond the confines of our personal contexts. Approached with humility, our human curiosity has taken us out toward the stars and deep into our souls. Manipulated by arrogance and greed, however, curiosity becomes something to be beaten into submission by a lust for control. On the one hand, we’re dumbstruck with wonder at worlds without end; on the other, we recoil at envisioning the end of a world.
As United Methodist Insight begins its eighth year, we’re grateful for the countless people who have supported our curiosity to find the “new thing” that God is doing. The glimpses we’ve had of the “new thing” have energized us enough to keep going through the darkness, just as NASA’s InSight was propelled through the star-speckled darkness of outer space.
We invite you to join us on the continuing mission; we’ll help one another find the way.
Cynthia B. Astle serves as Editor of United Methodist Insight, which she founded in 2011.