BBC Radio 4 2016-06-21

When Major Tim Peake returned from the international space station on Saturday, he yearned to see his family, as well as for a pizza and a cold beer. He’d been crammed, along with two other astronauts, into a boiling, tiny capsule, just two metres wide.

Landing back on Earth must be unimaginably bumpy and the impact on his body was likened to that of a serious car crash. He described the process of returning as being similar to the “world’s worst hangover”.

He explained that the most unexpected discovery of his six-month mission was simply the blackness of space. As he said, "when you look in the opposite direction, away from Earth, you see how dark space is. It’s just the blackest black.”

I wonder what that felt like for him, what it did to his spirit to face such darkness day after day.

In my bleak, dark moments, I need to consciously force myself to look in the opposite direction, to turn my head away from that darkness and to keep focused on being on this earth, with what's happening, at this time, right now.

This week, the Torah section that some Jews are reading highlights different approaches to adversity. When the Israelites were wandering in the wilderness, the Torah describes how Moses dispatched twelve of them to scout out the Land of Canaan. He instructed them to "have a good look: assess the people: Are they strong or weak? Is the land pleasant or harsh? Are there forests?"

All twelve scouts were in the same land at the same time, but they experienced it very differently. Ten of them were petrified, exclaiming that the people were like giants, like ogres and that, in comparison, they felt like grasshoppers. All the Israelites responded with a wailing uproar and a call to rebel against Moses. "Why has God brought us to this country to kill us? Why don't we just head back to Egypt? And right now!"

But two scouts, Kalev and Joshua, saw beyond their own fears. They were courageous and tried to calm the crowd saying, “don’t be afraid of them,” of those Canaanites, “with God’s protection, we can overcome this.” They chose to look away from the bleakest options, towards the goodness of the land and so, unlike the others, Kalev was allowed to live there and Joshua was rewarded with leading the Israelites after Moses’ death.

Kalev, Joshua or Major Peake, model how we can reassess our reactions so that we can experience "the blackest black" as tranquillity instead of turbulence.

First broadcast 21 June 2016