I am going to try to write down what tonight felt like, because I don’t think I will ever feel anything quite like it again and I want to have a record.

Apollo 8 is in lunar orbit. Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders have been orbiting the Moon since yesterday. They are 240,000 miles from Earth, circling another world at roughly 3,600 miles per hour, close enough to the surface to see individual craters by eye. No human being has ever been there before.

This evening, on Christmas Eve, they did a live television broadcast from lunar orbit.

The picture came through on our television — better than I expected, actually, considering it was being transmitted from the Moon. Black and white, somewhat grainy, but recognizable. The surface of the Moon scrolling past as the spacecraft orbited. The crew spoke. They talked about what they could see — the craters, the maria, the strange beauty of a world without atmosphere, without color, without life. Every surface feature casting sharp shadows because there’s nothing to scatter the light. The Moon in stark black and white and gray, exactly as the photographs show it but experienced now by three men actually there.

And then they read from Genesis.

Anders first, then Lovell, then Borman. Not the whole book — the first ten verses. “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…” They took turns reading, one verse at a time, from 240,000 miles away, in orbit around the Moon, on Christmas Eve.

I am not a religious man in any organized sense. I go to church occasionally, mostly for the community of it. But sitting in my living room with Betty and the kids watching Christmas Eve come in on the television, listening to three astronauts read from Genesis while the Moon’s surface rolled past their window — something in me went very quiet. Something felt, I don’t know how else to say it, like it fit. Like this was the right moment for this reading. The first chapter of Genesis is about creation, about the deep and the formless and light being made from darkness. And here were three men at creation — or something like it — looking at a world before life, the ancient Moon, and reading the oldest words we have about beginnings.

Borman ended the broadcast: “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.”

All of you on the good Earth.

A photograph was taken today — Bill Anders took it when he looked out the window and saw it. Earth, rising above the lunar horizon. Our planet — blue and white and brilliant against the absolute black of space — coming up above the gray and ancient surface of the Moon. I haven’t seen the photograph yet; it’ll be developed and released later. But the crew described it. Earth rising over the Moon.

Earthrise. That’s what they’re calling it. I imagine it will be the most important photograph ever taken. I imagine it will be on the front page of every newspaper in the world. I imagine that everyone who sees it will feel, for a moment, what the crew of Apollo 8 felt when they looked out the window and saw our home, small and blue and fragile and impossibly beautiful, hanging in the dark.

Tomorrow — Christmas Day — they fire the engine and come home. The engine burns on the far side of the Moon, out of radio contact. We’ll hold our breath for six minutes. Then we’ll hear if the burn worked.

But tonight: three men in lunar orbit read Genesis on Christmas Eve. And somewhere in the black sky above my house, our planet turned, and somewhere out there was the Moon, and somewhere near the Moon was a tiny spacecraft with three men in it who had seen the Earth rise above the lunar horizon.

I don’t have the words for what this year ended up being. I’ll try to find them later. Tonight I just want to sit with it.

Merry Christmas. From the good Earth.