The final category under the Federal Employee Job Description was the infamous “Duties as Assigned.” After my 42 years of service in state and federal employment, one of these assignments stands out as being among the most memorable – getting naked at work. As it turns out, according to Holy Scripture, this was about as genuinely “religious” as I could get while on any federal duty. More on that later…
My job as a NASA bioengineer (Space Life Sciences Engineer) was to design advanced life support systems for Lunar and Mars bases and crews. The system we were designing was designated a “Controlled Ecological Life Support System” or CELSS. Our task was to look as far ahead in time as our technology allowed and design systems that could independently operate hundreds of millions of miles from Earth, require minimal transport mass, use nominal energy, and be ultra-reliable. We immediately realized that this specific list of requirements was mostly oxymoronic, but it was our task to sort all that out anyway.
OBTW, no one ever had a better job than I did! The level of excitement was truly off the charts in our laboratories every day for many years.
My piece of the advanced life support systems pie was “Resource Recovery,” which I had immediately renamed from the Earthly term “waste processing” – because in space, if you create waste of any kind, you will die. Everything must be recycled in that “circle of life”. Therefore, everything is ultimately a resource.
A failure to “circle” in any life cycle is never one of the design options.
One of the sub-teams managed by our microbiologists realized that they needed a much better handle on how various species of bacteria and viruses looped through our life support system, and the identity of each disease-causing organism that lurked and thrived in every level of our machinery. This information would enable them to isolate and eliminate the offenders before they became a problem to the humans.
One of our scientists decided he needed to integrate some real humans very personally into the loop. He designed a Mars-appropriate shower unit and needed volunteer employees to sign up to use it for daily showers. By using the Mars shower, participants “donated” their personal collection of good and bad bacteria to the experiment. I was enthusiastically one of the first volunteers to sign up.
My advantage was that I was the award-winning early bird, showing up at my desk between 5:30 and 6:00 each morning after visiting the gym. Only one individual ever beat me to the office, the former Viking Mars Lander Chief Scientist, the late Dr. Richard S. Young. It was like sharing the office with Yoda before sunrise – Mars wisdom always on tap, and I never failed to use it as he patiently allowed.
It was convenient for me because the Mars shower unit was a relatively private affair, with an outer dressing vestibule sporting a door with a lock. The interesting thing about this shower was that it was a “Mars resource sensitive” unit and was intended to be used exactly as it would be on the Red Planet.
Due to the lack of readily available liquid water on Mars, “Hollywood showers” will be never be allowed – certified Navy showers only. The water for the test unit was obtained from our hydroponically grown food plants. The advanced life support system collected the water vapor created from transpiration through the plant leaves and condensed it back as an ultra-pure liquid. Our system was the real deal – one that would become the foundation for the future of human life on other worlds.
When I first approached the Mars shower, I logged into the computer outside, then moved into the white fiberglass dressing vestibule and locked the door. After undressing, I opened the plastic curtain and stepped into the shower itself. The first thing I did at that point was scan for cameras. One never really knows as much as they should about their geeky colleagues…
From my experience, a Navy shower most efficiently begins with a quick rinse-down before soaping up the hair and body. But for this Mars shower, one of my NASA botanist friends had developed a gel soap that could be made from plants grown on Mars. So, I slathered up with that slimy, odorless Mars-friendly concoction to begin the process.
The next thing was to check out the controls. My engineering friends made it absurdly simple. There was one button – ON. No OFF button was supplied. It dumped pre-warmed water for five minutes and then shut off, whether you were done or not.
The instruction on the wall was clear: rinse all the soap off before the clock ran out.
There were no do-overs allowed – period. If you didn’t get it all washed off, you would have to drive three miles to the Kennedy Space Center gym to have a longer shower and finish rinsing the goop off.
So I was ready, knowing that the ultra-pure water was also ultra-soft. The rumor was that the soap was difficult to rinse off.
I pushed the button and immediately got slammed in the face with the first spray of cold water. In about 10 seconds, it warmed up, and I started breathing again. To my surprise, I personally had no problem rinsing off the plant-based soap. When the process was complete, I looked anxiously at the red countdown clock. I still had three and a half minutes remaining and no way to turn it off. So, I stood there, enjoying my three and a half minute luxurious Hollywood Mars shower, unashamedly wasting an inestimably expensive resource.
Afterward, my critique was to install a shutoff button to end the shower early if finished. But the microbiologist in charge replied that they needed that volume of water to ensure that the organisms from our skin mixed with the soap was just the right blend for the study.
For several months, my daily shower required that I get naked for science at work. Fortunately, unlike astronaut candidates, I enjoyed maximum privacy in this little niche of the Agency.
Over the years, as I have remembered this experiment, I also recall that special evening that our Templar forefathers spent just before their accolade and knighting. Each one of them enjoyed a ritual bath, attended by older, experienced knights. This bathing represented a ritualistic cleansing, symbolizing the washing away of sins, old fears, and the candidate’s past life, allowing them to emerge reborn for a new life of honor, service, and duty. They would subsequently put on white clothes (symbolizing purity), then proceed to a vigil, where they spent the night in prayer. In medieval times, this ritual was strongly associated with the general medieval “Order of the Bath” ceremony for knighthood in most Orders.
As Masters of Postulants, Claudia and I represent the “Order of the Bath” for our Postulants through a scripturally supported foot washing ceremony.
In our Templar Order, the ritual bath is strongly associated with the cleansing not of deadly microorganisms, but of even deadlier sin. The aspect of nakedness is also a vital link in this symbolic process, as we must openly bare ourselves to God, Who Himself does the washing of our sins and cleansing of our lives in preparation for the most holy work of the Templar on the battlefields of life.
We hide our nakedness from others behind doors and walls. But we can hide nothing from the omniscient eyes of our Creator. I love this scripture that connects that ultimate openness to God to His love for each of us:
“Where can I go from Your Spirit?
Or where can I flee from Your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, You are there;
If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there.
If I take the wings of the dawn,
If I dwell in the remotest part of the deep,
Even there Your hand will lead me,
And Your right hand will lay hold of me.
If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will overwhelm me,
And the light around me will be night,’
Even the darkness is not dark to You,
And the night is as bright as the day.
Darkness and light are alike to You.”
(Psalm 139:7-12)
Because God sees everything, and from Him nothing can be hidden, therefore, it is He and He alone Who can cleanse us and make us worthy Templars, ready for battle each day.
Finally, beloved, our daily cleansing before God is connected directly to His view of our capacity to be of service to the Kingdom of God, which some would describe as “religion.” And what exactly is religion?
“Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” (James 1:27)
As Templars, we are called to assist those at risk both in His Holy Land and in our own communities, including orphans, Christian families, and widows. But all that good work is not enough, unless we are first cleansed of our own stains of sin and of the world’s marks upon our lives. Then will God consider us worthy Templars, ready for His sacred duty each day, but only by our daily presence at the true “Order of the Bath.”