Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
guarantee that the same thing will happen again. After all, Gaia is now older and more
stressed by the sun, and the current mass extinction is happening much more quickly
than any other. Nevertheless, there is at least a good chance that Gaia will eventually
recover, but the question reveals an attitude which is somewhat troublesome and un-
helpful, for in order to comply with it you have to mentally abstract yourself from the
tragedy of what is happening and pretend that you are not fully
embedded
in Gaia as
one of her humble living, breathing, animate creatures. You have to pretend that you are
somehow immune to what is happening, that you can take an aloof, God's eye view of
the situation. But whether you like it or not, you are utterly part of Gaia, biologically,
psychologically and spiritually. Our very bodies, our dreams, our creativity, our imagin-
ation all come from her, and in end the matter that we are made of will return to her
when our lives are done. Once you allow yourself to feel this deep belonging to Gaia,
there is no question that what we are doing to her now is wrong, and that we have to do
something about it.
So being of service to Gaia requires us to develop a deep sense of embeddedness in
the life of the great planetary being that has given birth to us and to every other creature
that has ever oozed, crawled or sent its roots into our planet's soil. We need to sense
that our every step is taken not
on,
but
in
the Earth; that we walk, talk and live our
whole lives inside a great planetary being that is continuously nourishing us physically
with her miraculous mantle of green and her luscious swirling atmosphere, a being that
soothes our psyches with her subtle language of wind and rain, with the swoop of wild
birds and with the majesty of her mountains. We need to develop a sense of ourselves as
beings in symbiotic relationship with Gaia, just as the mitochondria live in an intimate
relationship with their larger, unseen host. We need to remember that our very breathing
is to drink our mother's milk—the air—made for us by countless microbial brothers and
sisters in the sea and soil, and by the plant beings with whom we share the great land
surfaces of our mother's lustrous sphere. We need to develop a sense that Gaia really
is alive, not in some metaphorical sense, but really, actually, palpably, to the extent that
that you recognize the joy of sunlight on the great bare branches of winter trees as not
just your joy, but as the joy of the entire cosmos revelling in sheer astonishment that
such beauty could have unfurled out of itself like a young leaf in spring into the plenum
of being. Let Gaia take you over—let yourself be
Gaia'ed
over and over again.
Rolling the Great Round Earth
Find a place to walk calmly outside in nature.
