Some of the biggest moments in a life are very quiet.
No crowd. No music. No one clapping.
Just you, and a thought that will not let go.
Robert Goddard was born on this day, October 5, in 1882. He grew up in Worcester, Massachusetts. As a boy he loved to read, to tinker, and to wonder how things worked.
When he was seventeen, he had a chore to do.
It was October 19, 1899. A tall cherry tree stood behind the family barn. Some of its branches were dead. So Robert took a saw and a hatchet and climbed up to trim them.
That is all. A boy. A tree. A chore.
But the afternoon was lovely. Years later, he wrote about it in his own words:
“It was one of the quiet, colorful afternoons of sheer beauty which we have in October in New England, and as I looked toward the fields at the east, I imagined how wonderful it would be to make some device which had even the possibility of ascending to Mars.”
He had been reading wild stories about space in the newspaper. Now, up in the branches, one of those stories turned into a question. What if it could be done? What if he could do it?
Nobody heard him think it or gave him a prize. He just sat there, with the fields below and the sky above, and something inside him settled.
Then he wrote the part I love most:
“I was a different boy when I descended the tree from when I ascended, for existence at last seemed very purposive.”
Purposive is an old-fashioned word. It means “having a purpose.” He climbed up a boy with a saw. He climbed down a boy who knew what his life was for.
He never forgot that day. He kept a diary, and he named October 19 his “Anniversary Day.” Year after year, he marked it. He went on to build and launch the first rocket powered by liquid fuel, in 1926. But the real beginning was that quiet afternoon, long before anyone knew his name.
Maybe you have had a moment like that.
Maybe it happened at a kitchen table. Or in a garden. Or on a long drive, or in the back pew of a church, or while your hands were busy with something small.
You were not trying to find your purpose. You were just doing the next ordinary thing. And then, softly, something became clear.
Those moments are easy to miss because they do not shout nor come with a sign. But they matter.
Today is also the memorial of St. Faustina Kowalska, a Polish sister who kept her own diary. She wrote down her prayers and her quiet conversations with God in a small notebook. She was a simple, hidden person, and her private pages have touched people all over the world. The Church remembers her today, and her life reminds us that hidden, faithful moments are never wasted.
So here is a gentle thought for your Monday.
Pay attention to the small, still moments. Write them down if you can. A line in a notebook. A note in the margin. A few words you will be glad to find years from now.
You may not know yet what yours is for. That is all right.
Go ahead and climb the tree. Do the next small thing.
And when the quiet comes, let it speak.
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