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| A Nation of Explorers... |
February 06, 2003 |
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Dear Friends,
This has been a hard week for America, and for New Mexico.
As we gathered in places of worship over the weekend, New Mexicans asked God to ease the suffering of seven families struck by tragedy and to bring them peace.
The loss of Columbia hurts all of us deeply.
They are our conquistadores, our heroes in a world too often dominated by anti-heroes and worn with care.
There is something about the astronauts that reflects the best of who we are as Americans. We are a questioning, building, exploring, wondering people, destined to follow knowledge like a sinking star.
Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote of the aging hero Ulysses, who, after returning to Ithaca from an odyssey of 20 years, is called back to the sea as Americans are called to explore space. He seemed to understand the courage and the longing of a brave heart:
Come, my friends,
‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
(But). . . that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
We are Americans. We will mourn and memorialize heroes lost. We will comfort the families. We will study what went wrong and then we will strive and seek and find a newer world.
And when we are done with our exploring, we will come back to the place where we started, and feel we know the place for the first time.
Sincerely,
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