Missa Gaia – Philosophy 101

In a recent Washington Post review of The Saddest Pleasure, a book by Moritz Thomsen about his travels in Columbia and Brazil, a Brazilian poet, in reaction to the destruction of the rain forests, states to Thomson “We've got to destroy the last of [God's] immense creations. It is our revenge on God for condemning us all to death...We have to say, ‘If you have given us all this only to let us die, you have given us nothing’.”

Although love of nature is a common theme in many forms of human artistic expression, the same organism is also responsible for the wholesale slaughter of wildlife, environmental pollution and destruction, and numerous other atrocities against its home that present a picture which gives some credence to the Brazilian poet's observation. It is as though our species has a nearly schizophrenic outlook toward its fellow creatures and the planet that supports them.

In contrast to this frightening and depressing view is the concept of Earth as a living entity, a self-regulating body in which whales, trees, bacteria, and even man are integral parts of a super-organism. The ancient Greeks referred to the earth goddess as Gaia, or Ge, for short, and many cultures have viewed our planet as more than just resources to be exploited, but it was in 1979 that William Golding used the term in a scientific context and the Gaia concept began to be regarded as a viable theory, uniting the biologic, chemical, and other sciences as well as spawning works such as Paul Winter's Missa Gaia, or Earth Mass.

Although albums by the Paul Winter Consort are usually found in the “New Age” bin of most record stores, the group has been performing “New Age,” and “Fusion” styles of music long before these labels were coined. The composition of the Consort changes from time to time, but their music is always distinguished by a blending of types and origins, with later albums, such as Missa Gaia, incorporating sounds from nature and seeking “...the crossroads in the network of earth's music” and “...the quest for the common ground among all beings…” 1

The Mass, performed in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, begins with an adaptation of the words of St. Francis “Canticle of Brother sun” combined with verses from the book of Job, the former naming Planets, Stars, Elements, and all types of animals as conduits of praise to a great harmony while the words of Job speak of the power of living things to teach man of the beauty of the Earth. The effect is as intended, to begin the Missa Gaia as “...a call to worship addressed to all of creation.”2 Immediately evident is the combination of a sensual anthropomorphism with an intellectual concept; the connectedness, harmony, and peaceful intertwining of the vastly diverse elements and creatures of the Universe.

“Kyrie” opens with the call of a female tundra wolf, and Paul Winter's comments point out that it includes a three whole step interval known as the tritone, which in earlier centuries of our civilization was known as the interval of the Devil. While he muses on the irony of its (extremely effective) use in a Mass, I muse on the further irony that the church, so often the suppressor of human thought and expression, persecutor of philosophers, musicians, and artists, is here nurturing a concept of freedom and unity that the philosophers, in their fear of the church, could not embrace. Was it not the concept of inadequacy and inferiority, the infestation of evil in man which contributed to the development of the Cartesian dichotomy, a concept that, though logically untenable, still persists in human “mind over matter” attitudes? Or does the mind-body split go back to Plato, who looked upon the physical and sensual as an encumbrance, and our reason as only a stepping stone to some greater “reality?”

As the “Wolf theme” develops, and the Kyrie Eleison is passed from wolf to solo voice, to choral chant, rhythmically supported by the mellow percussion of Ghanian double-bells, the power of the intellect in harmony with the emotional and spiritual becomes even more clear. Our understanding has made it possible to turn what was fearful and sinister, be it wolf or religious dogma, into a positive intellectual experience, while it is our physical and emotional component which allows us to experience the joy of it so fully.

In “Mystery,” the soloist sings of an all-encompassing wonder - “...grant that I may feel you always, in everything.'' It is a paean to the harmony of self with self and the universe, and the pleasure of not-understanding combined with the romantic passion of curiosity which drives our species to know all that can be known. To me, the passion expressed also invokes the longing to perceive the total intertwining expressed by Spinoza's words: ''The greatest good is the knowledge of the union which the mind has with the whole nature.”3

A different perspective is created in an instrumental duet performed by Cathedral organist Paul Halley and Paul Winter. Entitled “Return to Gaia,” it begins with Paul's soprano sax in a soliloquy invoking the image of Man viewing his home from space. His yearning is evident as he sees the small blue sphere grow until the feeling merges with the magnificence of the planet, portrayed by the growing power of the organ as he draws nearer. The fantasy ends with the gentle call of a Loon - the traveler has returned. The words of astronaut Rusty Schweickart: “And a little later on your friend goes out to the moon. And now he looks back and he sees the Earth not as something big, where he can see the beautiful details, but now he sees the Earth as a small thing out there. And the contrast between that bright blue and white Christmas tree ornament and the black sky, that infinite universe, really comes through, and the size of it, the significance of it. It is so small and fragile and such a precious little spot in that universe that you can block it out with your thumb, and you realize that on that small spot, that little blue and white thing, is everything that means anything to you all of history and music and poetry and art and death and birth and love, tears, joy, games, all of it on that little spot out there that you can cover with your thumb. And you realize from that perspective that you’ve changed, that there's something new there, that the relationship is no longer what it was.”4

Although I haven't been to space, I've seen The Dream is Alive,5 its IMAX media bringing one as close as ordinary people will ever get to the experience, been at sea in a small ship many miles from land, perceived our home from a light plane in the early morning with no one to distract my thoughts, and every time wondered whether the world would be different if all could share the sight, the sound, the feel, and something more than the sum of these parts; a merging of intellectual, physical, and emotional being conveying the overwhelming thought that we can be so much more than we are. I think too how strange the swings of perception from the anthropocentric arrogance of views exemplified in Descartes’ automatonic animals to the self-defeating pronouncements of Hume, Kant, and others who place limitations on our sensory and rational capabilities; true - either alone is limited, but we are not, or should not be, partial beings.

From the moon to the Colorado River deep in the Grand Canyon, the Mass continues to celebrate the Earth. In “For the Beauty of the earth” the song of a Canyon Wren parallels the descent, its cascading song repeating, the soprano sax answering, while a ceremonial drum, “the Heartbeat of the Earth,” provides the bond between them. The handmade drum, tiny wren, magnificent canyon, manufactured saxophone, and the artistic and technological abilities of the human mind come together and a moment is created that never has been before: but that will be shared again and again with all who have the physical means to reproduce it and the mental and emotional receptiveness to accept it.

A tambura and harmonium create a “drone continuum,” the Indian symbol of the sound of the universe, as the background for the plainchant “Adore te devote.” Medieval Gregorian and ancient Eastern cultures blending and speaking a common language. Is this the seeking of man for something higher then himself, an escape from Hobbes “...brutish and short life,” or a celebration of the unity and understanding he has already achieved?

A Humpback whale song begins “Sanctus and Benedictus,” which soon builds to a rhythmic celebration based on a Brazilian folk form called a Baiao. Paul Winter is told that the Sanctus should be jubilant, and he observes that the whale’s song is appropriate, since “Any species that has flourished for 50 million years ought to be jubilant.”

Another irony occurs to me as I realize that the whale, a creature that is suspected of sharing, at least to some degree, man's unique gift of intelligence, may have reached the end of that long and prosperous reign due to his fellow being's short-sightedness. “...What should we have thought of an early race of hunters who developed a taste for horse meat and then proceeded to eliminate the horse from the Earth by systematically hunting and killing every one, merely to satisfy their appetite...what a waste to fail to recognize the ability of the working partnership between horse and man!...''6

The unique ability of man to perceive the whole, to relate events over time, to perceive causality, to pass knowledge and experiences from individual to individual and from generation to generation exists. Why is it so often left unused to satisfy the conditions of the moment? Our partnership with our fellow creatures is not such that our epistemology is the same as theirs; it is not limited to the sensual and perceptual, the here and now, immediate reaction. Our conceptual abilities set us apart, enabling us to bridge time and space and know the consequences of our acts. Our role is to be the conscious mind of Earth, but we are only now beginning to consider accepting it. Much of our history has painted us as helpless victims of the whims of a hostile world, and yet the thriving of our species has shown that view to be an illusion. If we abdicate our responsibility and our will to outside forces, be they manipulating gods, the indifferent mechanizations of the Hegelian “Absolute,” or Marxist dialectics, and so feel free to defer to the appeal of expedience, we can expect to share the fate of those creatures who do not possess our luxury of conscious choice, and breed, like lemmings, until we have exceeded our environment's and our own ability to provide for our further survival.

Missa Gaia continues, a cello greeting the “Stained Glass Morning” accompanied by the Uirapuru, a wren thought by many to have the most beautiful song in South America, and the percussive sounds of the chains of the Thurible, the incense burner swung by a priest during the Mass. The “Dance of Gaia” blends symphonic tympani, Brazilian samba drums, cello, oboe, and sax to symbolize the energies of the living Gaia. West Africa is joined with South America through a song brought to Brazil by slaves, and the Earth of Robert Heinlein7 lives again in “The Blue Green Hills of earth,” the “Blue” added to the title of Heinlein's novel by Kim Oleo, the lyricist, with the concurrence of Rusty Schweickart, who says the green is muted by the blue when looking at Earth through the atmosphere.

In the Middle Ages, the priest would say “Ite missa est” - “Go, the Mass is finished.” Today, he chants “Let us depart in peace,” the final selection in Missa Gaia. A recap of “Canticle of Brother sun” is played with the calls of Sister Loon, Brother Wolf, and Sister Whale restating the theme of unity and interdependence. I recognize again the difference between the superstitious, fearful, anthropomorphic mysticism of the past and this joining of the rational and emotional statement of our relationship to ourselves and our world. I wonder too if we will allow ourselves to “depart in peace,” as individuals in our inevitable deaths, or as a species, as we grow and reach out to the stars or are simply superseded by greater beings in the process of evolution. 

Will we accept responsibility for our own existence, recognize our abilities and the effect of our actions on ourselves and the creatures with whom we share this planet and the system of which we are a part, or will we, as the poet observed at the beginning of this exploration, consume ourselves with hatred of our own shortcomings and destroy what has been given us because we cannot accept our own mortality? Whether the Gaia concept is true and we are a part of a living organism, or more conventional ecological theories apply, our choices are the same.

Video - https://youtu.be/MvGbt-n0pcg