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Many people ask me "What is
Gaia?" At its most fundamental level, Gaia can be
summed up in 2 words - "Spaceship Earth". That
means that this planet we inhabit is a complex organism,
and that each and every piece of the planet is
inter-related. Just as we, as human beings, have
organisms who live on us (on our skin, in our hair,
inside our bodies), so too are we organisms that live on
the Earth. And together, we and everything else on this
planet, are together in a great journey, so that what
happens to the Earth happens to us, just as what happens
to us happens to the Earth.
Most of us sense that the Earth is
more than a big rock with a thin layer of air,
ocean and life covering the surface. We feel that we
belong here, as if this planet were our home. Long
ago the Greeks, thinking this way, gave the
name Gaia or, for short, Ge to describe the Earth. In those days, Science and
Theology were one and Science, although less precise,
had soul. As time passed this relationship faded. The life sciences, no longer concerned
with life, fell to classifying dead things. Ge was stolen from Theology to become no
more than the root from which the disciplines of Geography and
Geology were named. In the last few years,
however, there are
signs of a change. Science is becoming holistic again and
rediscovering the soul, and Theology, moved by ecumenical
forces, begins to realize that Gaia is not to be
subdivided for academic convenience and that Ge is much
more than just a prefix.
 This
new understanding has come, in part, from going
into space and looking back to see the Earth. The
vision of that little blue sphere
stirred us all. It opened the mind's eye, just as a
voyage away from home enlarges the perspective of our
love for those who remain there.
The first impact of those
voyages was the sense of wonder given to the astronauts
and to us as we shared their experience vicariously
through television, but at the same time the Earth was
viewed from outside by the more objective gaze of
scientific instruments. These devices were quite
impervious to human emotion yet they also sent back the
information that let us see the Earth as a strange and
beautiful anomaly. They showed our planet is made of the
same elements and in much the same proportions as are
Mars and Venus, but they also revealed our sibling
planets to be bare and barren and as different from the
Earth as a robin from a rock.
We now see that the air, the
ocean and the soil are much more than a mere environment
for life; they are a part of life itself. Thus the air
is to life just as is the fur to a cat or the nest for a
bird. Not living, but something made by living things to
protect against an otherwise hostile world. For life on
Earth the air is our protection against the cold depths
and fierce radiations of space.
There is nothing unusual in the
idea of life on Earth interacting with the air, sea and
rocks, but it took a view from outside to glimpse the
possibility that this combination might consist of a
single giant living system and one with the capacity to
keep the Earth always striving for a steady state most favorable for the
life upon it.
An entity comprising a whole
planet and with a powerful capacity to regulate the
climate needs a name to match. It was the novelist
William Golding who proposed the name Gaia.
The evidence gathered in
support of Gaia is now considerable but as is often the
way of Science, this is less important than is its use
as a kind of looking glass for seeing the world differently,
and which makes us ask new questions about the nature of
Earth.
If we are "all creatures
great and small," from bacteria to whales - all part of
Gaia - then we are all of us potentially important to her
well being. We knew in our hearts that the destruction
of whole ranges of other species was wrong but now we
know why. No longer can we merely regret the passing of
one of the great whales, or the blue butterfly. When we eliminate one of these from
Earth, we may have destroyed a part of ourselves, for we
also are a part of Gaia.
There are as many possibilities
for comfort as there are for dismay in contemplating the
consequences of our membership in this great
commonwealth of living things. It may be that one role
we play is as the senses and nervous system for Gaia.
Through our eyes she has for the first time seen her
very fair face and in our minds become aware of herself.
We do indeed belong here. The earth is more than just a
home, it's a living system and we are part of it.
Here at the Gaia Way we strive
to work in such a manner that we reflect the
inter-relationship between all things. We are working to
restore the precious Atlantic rainforests in Brazil
which are home to hundreds of species of animals,
thousands of insect species, and enumerable plant and
flora species. Our efforts on behalf of the Music Tree (aka
Pau Brazil tree) are a true reflection of this
interrelatedness. Here is a tree growing only in a few
hundred miles along the Atlantic rainforest in Brazil,
yet it is responsible for making beautiful music all
over the world.
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