“Could You Ground Yourself on Mars?”

“Could You Ground Yourself on Mars?”

Providence Alaska Medical Center (Anchorage, AK)

Reflection on Gimlet Media’s The Habitat Podcast

Sam Melton, MDiv ‘19

My identity at Graduate School, or really in my normal life I might say, most people I know, know that I have a deep love for three things: podcasts, anything related to outer space, and Lutheran theology. With this admittedly odd slew of interests, I feel I owe a bit of an explanation. You see, I love of these things so much in fact, that I’m spending a whole year writing about a podcast that talks about life on Mars and the religious lives of future astronauts.

And so before I explain myself, I know that there is a chance that there is a bit of a generation gap in the room, so a few explanations first. A podcast, if you’re unfamiliar, is nothing more than a pre-recorded radio show that you can listen to on your phone. This particular podcast that I’ll be sharing with you, is called the The Habitat, and it tells the story of the NASA HI-SEAS project. This NASA project is simply a dome in Hawaii that is meant to simulate a possible city on Mars. If you can imagine a giant white bubble, you can pretty much imagine this dome.

Here, in this dome, there lives a carefully selected crew of six “astronauts” that volunteer to live together in the dome for one year. They do everything astronauts would do on Mars. They can not go outside without space suits and only for scientific missions, they can only eat astronaut food, they must shower, go to the bathroom, and sleep, like astronauts, and though they can send an email, it will take about 30 min. to be delivered since it’s, hypothetically, traveling from Mars to Earth.

Now, there are few that would volunteer for such an experiment and even fewer that would be qualified. Now, this project has all the makings of a wonderful social drama. It has love and heartbreak and fights and disagreements, an outcast and an antagonist. And so, I do think NASA is on to something there.

But, what drew my interest into NASA’s little experiment is that they have an incredibly detailed scientific approach to this study. NASA collects the astronauts hair, urine, and even skin samples every day that they are inside of this dome, for a year I remind you. They have social scientists studying the details of group cohesion and psychologists trying to figure out what exactly makes the best astronaut to live on Mars. Yet, in all of this, they never mention the subject of religion. Not once, do we get to hear of the astronauts potential religious or lack of religious beliefs or spiritual practices. For some reason, this seem to be the piece about this project that drew me in.

And so, though we don’t hear specifically about religion, we do hear of these astronauts hobbies and loves. In fact, we have a chance to hear from the astronauts who found something to ground them inside of this dome and we find that those that had a hobby, or some kind of practice, like meditation, found themselves exiting that dome a year later, much happier than those that didn’t.

So perhaps this doesn’t tell us the details or value of religion in outer space, but I do believe that it clues us into something.

These astronauts embark on this absurd year of isolation on a fake Mars planet and they let us know that they never would have made it out of that dome sane had they not found something to ground themselves in.

In this dome, six strangers living very closely together for a year, we hear about what helped them through it all. Two of them fell in love and they talk about how this relationship was vital to their survival. For even when they were feeling down, the other was there to bring them tea or a freeze dried cookie to cheer them up. Another started to learn a new instrument, for when she found herself bored or depressed, she could turned to music. Another found support by emailing her husband at home on ‘Earth’ saying that though communication was slow, his morning letters is what made her look forward to the next day.

And then the others, well, they didn’t quite seem to find something that would help ease the monotony of the days. And for those that never found this, well, they ended up not doing so well. They are the ones who find themselves mentally breaking down. They become harder to work with as a team, their tasks began to diminish in quality, and they were unmotivated to actually do their jobs. I can only imagine how the collection of those hair and skin samples day after day after day, became difficult to get through.

And so I ask you, fellow potential astronauts, because we are all potential astronauts until NASA tells us otherwise, what is it that grounds you? All of us here carry the weight of others. Whether you’re an astronaut, doctor, surgeon, nurse, or chaplain, whatever it is that you carry for your patients, doesn’t leave you when you walk out of those hospital doors. And though we know we should be able to leave it, we are human after all, and we carry it. And so I wonder again, what or who is it that grounds you in this place? What is it that supplies that oxygen to your space suit?

Is it a fresh cup of coffee that draws you in in the morning or the taste of a home cooked meal? Or is it a short text from a loved one in the middle of the day? Maybe, it is the small amount of quiet time you get in the car on the way home? It may be prayer, or reading of scripture, or a moment of meditation, perhaps even music.

Though we are not nearly 34 million miles away from home, most of us here are not where we would consider home and even though I’m only 4,500 miles from home, sometimes it doesn’t feel any different then Mars and I find myself grasping for something to ground me during my time here. For me, though as silly as it sounds, I’ve found this grounding in a picture of my dog that keeps me company at my desk and the writing of a postcard home every once in a while.

It turns out, that us here, some chaplains at Providence, are not all that different than these astronauts living on a hypothetical Mars.

And so, this week, I encourage you to think more about what it is that keeps your heart strong while here. Whether you are here for a short or a longtime, I encourage you to remind yourself of a practice, a hobby, or even a person, that helps keep you stay healthy. My hope is that this week, you’ll not only think a lot more about outer space, astronauts, and fake Mars experiments, but that you’ll really take time to focus on those self-care practices. That you’ll take time to identify them and do them more often.

I invite you to take as much time as you need here in this space, to prepare yourself for the day.