Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

There are moments in human history that are the equivalent of major earthquakes.  Everyone is rocked to the core.  Time is divided; there is “before the earthquake” and “after the earthquake.”

One of these earthquakes occurred in the 16th century, when Copernicus made the startling observation that the sun doesn’t move around the earth, but rather the earth and the planets orbit around the sun.  It was so difficult to believe that our planet isn’t the center of the universe that many people were glad when the Church declared his theory a heresy. 

Poor Galileo, who knew from telescope observations that Copernicus was right, was hauled up before the Inquisition on the charge of heresy.  When he invited his accusers to look through the telescope at the evidence, they refused.  Our eyes can be deceived, they said, but the Scriptures do not lie.  If the book of Joshua said that the sun stopped in the sky to give Joshua more light to slaughter his enemy, that must mean that the sun normally moves around the earth.  Case closed.  Galileo had to recant and bow to the wisdom of the Church.

Lest we think that we moderns are way beyond that level of ignorance, let’s admit that we still use the language of the sun “rising” and “setting.”  In fact, the sun never rises or sets.  What occurs at what we call sunset and sunrise is instead the movement of the earth around the fixed sun.

We might be at another “earthquake moment” in human history as governments are finally admitting that extraterrestrial visitors have visited our planet.  What we thought was fantasy in Star Trek, The X Files, My Favorite Martian, Alf, Mork and Mindy, E.T., Close Encounters of a Third Kind, and Contact is now being confirmed.  We are not alone in the universe.

To recognize that we have been visited by intelligent life from elsewhere will bring as much of a shock as Copernicus’ revolution did.  We should expect that this shift will be painful, raising even more questions than answers.   

Right now, in the wake of the government’s admission that it hid evidence of extraterrestrial life from us, the theories of what this admission means are exploding.  I’ve read that some believe we have been visited by angels.  Just last week, however, I read of a priest who warns that these visitors are more likely demons.  Others speculate that we are being visited by our own descendants, humans in the future who have mastered the skill of time-travelling. 

Other people are buying into a darker picture, that these alien beings are new enemies whom we should fear.   That was the premise of the movie Independence Day. Perhaps, the suggestion is made, they have come to colonize our planet, to take us over, even as European colonists once systematically tried to destroy the cultures of native peoples under the banner of Manifest Destiny.        

A theory that intrigues me suggests just the opposite, that we have been visited by beings who are worried that we are close to destroying ourselves in nuclear war, to devastating the planet’s ecosystem, or both.  Whoever our visitors are, they have come to save us from ourselves.  Or perhaps our visitors simply feel lonely in the universe and want to connect with other beings. 

If our visitors have come out of loneliness or out of a benevolent concern for us, I hear Mr. Rogers singing with the angels in heaven the ditty that my kids loved so much: 

I have always wanted to have a neighbor just like you
I’ve always wanted to live in a neighborhood with you, so
Let’s make the most of this beautiful day
Since we’re together, we might as well say,
Won’t you be mine, could you be mine,
Won’t you be my neighbor.