Beneath the things that we usually notice, our planet is made of rock.  A rock looks solid and static, but our planet is dynamic.  Rocks are still accumulating or eroding, and the large tectonic plates the surface consists of are slowly moving.  Europe/Africa and the Americas are moving apart by about 2cm a year with lava filling the gap to form the mid-Atlantic ridge.  As the lava solidifies, the little ferro-magnesian crystals form first and point north.  But as you examine the rocks further away they point south, then north and so on showing that the earth’s magnetic field regularly reverses its polarity.  Where the plates come together there is usually a subduction zone with one plate going under the other forming the oceanic trenches with an arc of volcanoes behind.  Sometimes the sediment on the sea floor is pushed up into a chain of mountains such as the Alps and Himalayas as two plates come together which is why you get marine shells at the top of Everest.  These movements mean that the rocks under our feet were probably formed at a different latitude and climate zone than they are in now. 

Sedimentary rocks, the clays, sandstones and limestones, were usually deposited under water although some are desert sandstones or glacial moraine.  There are volcanic rocks formed from lava or ash, and also from magma that has been intruded into the earth’s crust without reaching the surface until eroded later such as Dartmoor and the Whin sill.  And lastly there are metamorphic rocks like slate, marble, schist and gneiss that have been changed by heat and/or pressure.

What are the rocks in your local area? How and where were they formed? And what are they useful for?

Rocks

Rocks
are not just
out there,
they are living memories
of our planet’s past,
still moving, changing,
forming.

We are not
separate from them.
They affect
our landscape, our soil,
our plants, our food,
our bodies.

This is humankind’s
oldest relationship.

How much do you know about moss?  We see it covering stones of old walls, and west facing tree trunks.  We see it tended and venerated in Japanese gardens.  But moss is special.  Did you know it was the first plant to colonise the land 450 million years ago when there was no soil, just hard rock.  Other plants need soil for their roots but moss has no roots.  You can see it growing now on recent lava flows, bringing green to the black wastes.  On our early planet, moss created a fertile soil enabling other plants to grow on land, and the oxygen it produced enabled other life to thrive.

Moss can withstand extreme conditions better than all other plants.  You can find it in hot springs, and in a core sample from the south pole.  It is not adversely affected by radiation, but it can be used as an early warning system as the water inside it can be measured for the radiation it contains.  If it dries out, it can go into a state of suspended animation for decades, and then quickly revive as soon as it rains.  A new plant can grow back from a tiny fragment of leaf. Moss can produce herbicides and bactericides.  And they are one of the organisms most resistant to climate change.  There are about 25,000 different species.  How many different kinds of moss can you find?  In what ways can you identify with them? 

My piece this month is not about moss but our August weather.

Weymouth beach

It’s August and the day hangs grey and wet, there is spittle in the air, there are clouds near the ground.  The sun is not an orb.  His light has been diluted and muted and refracted and captured by all the balls of rain so there is a faint luminescence of grey like an oyster’s dream.  The gulls don’t mind, they still sing their silly song and strut the wet beach. 

There are two tides on the beach, two edges of water – the sea that scoops and scallops the lower sand, and the run-off from the pavement that dribbles and drools down the steps and edges.  There is no-man’s land in between, pock-marked with yesterday’s footfalls, littered with crashed castles washed to ruin.  Their people have all left and will be sitting cosy in cafes or edgy and waiting in holiday homes.  The most beautiful thing is a gull’s feather, lying white on clay-coloured sand, small and silent, collecting drops of rain like jewels.  This is how the day begins.  And, strangely, it is easier to walk the beach at first rising when it is flat and empty than when it is full of sunbeams and promise and people.  For here it is just my day and there is room in it for me to reach out and touch like the foot of a mussel.  It is safe to let in for it is simple and unaffected, a backdrop for love, a table for wonder.

I was honoured to be asked to write the theme poem for Jude Currivan’s amazing book ‘The story of Gaia’ (see www.wholeworld-view.org).

The Love Song of Cosmos

Theme poem for The Story of Gaia

In the beginning,
a breath.
So simple
yet perfect.

An exhalation of space-time
interwoven with energy
and dark energy,
matter and dark matter,
and early atoms
of hydrogen and helium
dancing, singing, cooling.

No random bang
but beauty, design, purpose.

The wait of the womb-like night
birthed early stars,
alchemical cauldrons
of elements needed for later,
fine-tuning and exact matching
of resonances
to craft carbon, nitrogen
and oxygen,
our building blocks
of organic life.

Then the thermonuclear blast
that seeded space
with stardust.

What power coalesced our planet,
held and in-formed
by her own star, Sol,
and twinned with our Moon
so their dance
drives healing tides
and future forms?

Gaia is not a static sphere
but a flow of magnetic, tectonic rocks
feeding oceans, making air,
changing and affecting each other
in a dynamic interplay of cohesion.

And so with the biosphere,
myriad beings finding
relationship and balance
in self-adjusting ecosystems
of innate unity
and complete diversity.

This is not blind, not accidental.
This, these, we
embody cosmic intelligence,
are sentient beings.

We are part of each other’s past.
We affect each other’s present.
We are Gaians.
We can co-create our future
together.

We are approaching the summer solstice again, the official beginning of summer and the longest day here in the north.  If it wasn’t for our planet’s tilt and all the variations of day length and sunshine and temperature, we wouldn’t have the winds, weather systems and ocean currents that bring change and movement and life.  My old Professor of geology used to say ‘Perfection is death’.

Interestingly, for the first time ever, true north, magnetic north and grid north aligned in November last year in Dorset at the small village of Langton Matravers where we often go in our camper.  They then stay converged as they slowly travel up the country for the next three and a half years.

How do you respond to changes in the seasons?  At the moment it is long days, sunshine and a profusion of green leaves and roses.  For we too are part of Gaia and will be influenced as much as the plants in our garden and the birds that have flown in.  Some of us luxuriate and unwind and blossom in the summer, some in the winter.  Let us honour our seasons, and expect times of new life and growth in our own lives and our institutions as well as in the natural world.

Fullness

This is it,
the fullness has come.

We have climbed the hill
of the lengthening days
and the quickening pulse,
and now we are tipping over the top
into summer. 

All year, the garden
has been preparing for this,
unfurling leaves,
flourishing flowers.

Now it is laid back
in its largesse,
letting the rain fill it,
letting the sun feed it,
offering itself to both
and to us
in all its green majesty.

I have come to realize more and more the importance of our link with the natural world.  This isn’t just about the peace we might find walking through the woods, or sitting by a stream.  And it isn’t just about the changes we hope to see in the planet as more of us learn to care. 

It grows out of the fact that the living world is one.  This is the essence of Gaia, that we are all interrelated and connected.  It is the essence of what science now shows us, that there is a unified nature to reality.  All things have what might be called consciousness at some level – in fact, consciousness rather than matter is what we and the whole universe fundamentally are.  This doesn’t just define us individually but is like an energy field linking us with everything – unity in the midst of a huge and wonderful diversity.  It is not just science but has been experienced by many mystics.

The culture and world-view here in the West has been one of separation, seeing us as separate from each other, from our planet, and from God.  So even if we take this concept of unity on board, it can be difficult to see and experience it.  But if we did live like this, what a difference it would make, to our planet and to us.  Many are saying that for humanity to survive it must change, and for me a loving relationship and sense of unity with the earth is an important part of what would enable that.  We are linked, so change in one will reflect change in the other.

This is a piece that talks about that living energy of the universe, the essence that links all together.  I have called it God but do use your own words or concepts.

Open

There are times when it seems the whole world lies open like an oyster’s shell, its surfaces shining instead of dull, revealing instead of hiding.  Each face and leaf and shape and colour is charged like an ocean of spirit, like a thumbprint of the Divine.  All are painted with the same brush, the same loveliness, and I can feel the same life rising up in me to meet them.  As they open I open, or perhaps the other way around. 

They offer so much more than a back drop to my walking, they are the pattern of my thinking, they are beauty in my soul.  They all know each other and I am part of the knowing, we are strung together like stitches in a garment, like waves finding shore.  And the ocean, the secret smile that filters through, is an essence of joy, of completeness, of Spirit.  Each of us is an echo of glory, each of us traces the love lines of God.

As we live we create, making portraits of God, for God.  We take our little part of the Universe and wrap it in words or gesture, in paint or clay, in steel or brick or paper, and unfold the Divine in the picture of our days.  The Source of all Being shining through light and shadow, through shape and colour, through leaf and face.  The world is open and God is within.