Gaia, She is all the life there is.

So here we are again with our world view changed, seeing ourselves back in the centre of the known Universe. We moved from seeing the earth as the centre four hundred years ago, to the earth being a tiny speck on the ocean of the Vastness, and then back again to the centre in one huge fell swoop.

For, according to a mathematician or two, we are likely to be the only, sole unique life force existing anywhere in the terrible cold vastness of space and time. It is apparently full of energy, but not of life. He has worked it out, plotting the variables for life against the numbers of stars and planets. And its just us. So again, we are alone.

Why should it matter? Why should we care in the day to day minutiae of mortgage, bills, work, children, friends, sleep, what difference does it make?

For Buddhists to be born human is they say the most special and fabulous thing. They have this lovely image of a blind turtle swimming in the Pacific Ocean and catching on its head the only golden ring floating in the beauty of that sea. To be born human is as likely, they say, as that turtle catching that ring. How much we should then value our sentient, thinking, beauty appreciating, language adorned life, woven through with love. How we should wonder at new life, especially new human life, for its rarity and its wonder and its self-awareness.

Maybe it is not a turtle and an ocean we need to think of. Maybe, if we listen to that mathematician, it is one planet and one life force in one Universe. Only one, we are the only one.

Without us all, all this teaming life that exists everywhere and in all sorts of difficult places on this beautiful blue globe, the Universe is truly sterile. It is just explosions and gases and elements and rocks - one enormous science lab without anyone to watch its experiments. One terrible cold, linked by terrible heat without anyone to look at and love it.

Let's be careful of nuclear bombs, chemical warfare, biological weapons, global warming, poison on the land, chimera, people made in jars, animals made for experiment, mountains of food and starvation of children. Let's watch out for tsunami, earthquakes, volcanoes, hatred, greed and lies. Let's condemn cruelty and violence of any kind, towards anyone and any form of life.

We must be careful, we are all there is.

Apricot and Coconut Teabread and 9/11

Monday

23^rd July 2001

Apricot and Coconut Teabread

At this time I was still teaching in London and struggling in every day, spending the weekends and evenings lying on the sofa because my back was so painful due to the accident we had in August 1999.

Oven: 170 Middle shelf for about 1 hour

Ingredients:

12 oz SR Flour

pint salt

4 oz sugar

5 oz chopped (snipped) apricots

2 oz desiccated coconut

zest of 1 lemon(originally I had written rind but I now have a zester and it is better!)

4 eggs

150 ml cream/yoghurt/milk

2 oz melted butter

1. Mix the flour, salt, sugar, coconut, apricots and lemon zest in a bowl.
2. Whisk together eggs, cream and melted butter.
3. Add to the dry ingredients making a soft dropping consistency adding more milk if necessary.
4. Bake in a well greased 2 lb loaf tin.
5. Turn out and drizzle icing over (icing sugar and boiling water mixed to a smooth consistency) and add snipped apricots on top.

This is a lovely cake eaten warm. It is very crumbly and moreish and very good with a cream tea.

This must have been the beginning of the Summer Holidays as I am cooking on a Monday, and probably celebrating the fact that I don't have to hobble into school. Shall I tell you the story of how I left teaching?

It was the 11^th September, 2001, just after this summer holiday. I was teaching in my classroom on the ground floor.

I had insisted that they move my classroom as it was becoming so difficult for me to climb the stairs, and I had also insisted that they let me have a chair for assemblies as I couldn't stand for more than 5 minutes without pain. At this time things were going from bad to worse. Every now and again I would have a muscle spasm in my back that was so painful I would cry, and one day in the supermarket … well never mind. All you need to know is that things were getting worse.

In the afternoon one of my students came into my classroom. Beside teaching, being Head of Humanities and having a form class, I also taught student teachers, he was one and not one of the best. It is best not to have silly hair when you are trying to become a teacher, especially if you put a bag over the braids every day. I am not joking. Only in London – right on chaps!

He said 'Some Arabs have highjacked a plane.'

I said 'Grass is green, sky is blue, Arabs highjack planes. Why are you telling me this?' Now he looked shocked and it is only recently that I have come to realise that there had been precious little highjacking of planes in the 90s, it was a 70s and 80s phenomenon and I was old enough to remember it.

The lesson finished and I went into the office to watch the planes hitting the towers. We all watched in silence, over and over again. I picked up my coat, said goodbye and went home.

I went next day to the doctor who had been telling me for a good while to stop work, as my back was getting worse. He signed me off to Christmas, then to Easter and I finally got my pension at 51. God is good.

The planes that day changed so many lives. I myself realised that life was too short to keep on keeping on at something that was making me worse. I had been spending lots of time dreaming about a bed and breakfast in Glastonbury, planning the rooms, the colours, the names. At the time I had been studying with Kathy Jones – year one was the introductory priestess course (1999-2000) and year two was ceremonies and rituals (2000-2001). After I left the school I began the devotional course, which was wonderful, and then in 2002 the course for bringing imagination into reality – I had already used this for the bed and breakfast. But I had left by Imbolc 2002.

Sometimes I miss the Goddess Movement a lot. I wish I could find a way to bring the strands of my beliefs together, to teach the good stuff from each. What would I have?

Worldwide Faith Cake

Buddhism – concentration, calm and awareness of the present moment

Hinduism – devotion, goddesses for all, non-violence, Gandhi

Goddess – the Divine as Feminine, the Wheel of the Year, women sitting in circle, the land

Sikhism – community, feeding the hungry, courage

Catholicism – mystery, deep scholarship and spirituality,

mysticism, prayer, saints and angels, freely giving teaching, service to all.

All these divisions, it is very sad indeed. I was very happy with the Goddess Movement until I realised that they too were bigoted and lacked peace for all. Shall I tell you that story too? Well I will, but later on.