y generation finds it hard explaining to the
next our joy at discovering the beauty of our earth seen
from space. We had thought it would be large, ugly,
wrinkled, brown; not this delicacy of Della Robbia blue
and white, this delightful fragile blue marble, with all
the wonder that there is in the body of a living,
breathing baby held in our arms; the marvel of holding a hazel nut , an olive
leaf, the Consecrated Host, in the palm of our hand;
sharing God's delight in Creation.
hrist met the Samaritan woman outdoors, at 
n Australia a nun said to me that the Aborigine
are worthless, they built no cities. Moved by the Spirit, I
replied 'But Cain, the first murderer, was the first city
builder, Abel instead a pilgrim, who built none'. European
culture with its cities transposed, York, Jorvik a Viking
village in Sweden, becoming the new name of formerly Roman
Eboracum, the city of York in England, becoming the
megalopolis of New York in the United States, is a culture
of emigration, of conquest, of displacement, of trauma. But
the Native Peoples left almost no
trace, no scar, upon the face of the blue marble, living
harmoniously with it.
he 
God, to those who have hunger, give
bread 
rova ad avere pazienza:
anche per un pezzo di pane 
he Della Robbia family
took the simplest material, earth, clay, terra cotta,
the stuff from which bricks and tiles are made, from
which God made Adam and Eve, Everyman and Everywoman,
Adam in Hebrew meaning also men and women, earth and
red, Christ's naming himself so as 'Son of Man',
'Ben-Adam'. Then they added to it glazes from sand of
blue and white and green, creating, before we knew it,
the colours of our delicate blue marble. Prayer is to
take our clay, our mortal, finite flesh and bone and
blood, and make it not only of earth, but also of
heaven's eternity, to change its carnal red to
priestly blue. The colour of the High Priest
Aaron's robes in the Temple; the colour of Mary's
robes in humble Nazareth.
uakers and Amish
eschew churches as steeple houses, the stuff of pride.
Often we meet in homes, or we build and use the
simplest Meeting Houses. My children and I became
Members of the Society of Friends. There is no
hierarchy. Though one can be on the Overseers' Bench
(this would correspond to 'Episcopus', 'bishop' which
means 'looking about one'). And one can be an Elder
(this would correspond to 'Presbyter', from which
comes the word, 'priest'). Women and men have been in
equality since the Religious Society of Friends
(Quakers)' founding in the Seventeenth Century through
to this our present Twenty-First Century. Likewise
children were recognized as equal with adults from the
start when their parents were goaled for religious
dissent and the children, though flogged, continued
the silent Meetings in Worship. 
e are human. Before
Christ a freed African slave, who wrote the purest
Latin, in a play had one character proclaim, 'Homo
sum: humani nichil a me alienum puto', 'I am human;
therefore I consider nothing of humanity alien to me'.
Montaigne painted that line from Terence's play on his
study ceiling. John Donne wrote it in English as 'No
man is an island'. We live on this blue marble in a
delicate symbiosis, the one with the other, breathing
the same air, sharing the same earth, joying in the
energy of sunlight. The earth is sacred, is God's
truest Temple, as Christ said to the Samaritan woman.
Our bodies, too, are sacred, and are Temples of the Spirit, Paul
his Apostle, tells us. Our bodies, minds, souls, are
as delicate a balance as is earth, air and energy.
Neither the earth nor ourselves should be wounded. Nor
should we wound the earth or another. There should be
no trauma , no abuse, no
crucifixion, no scapegoat, no holocaust
.
