Professor Moriarty tended his lecture by talking about an album of music released by Paul Winter in 1982 called “Missa Gaia/Earth Mass”. The title actually refers to two languages, Latin for the word missa which means mass (the religious service) and gaia from the Greek which refers to Mother nature. The earth in others words. So Missa Gaia is a mass for the earth.
Winter became artist in residence at the Cathedral of St. John Divine in New York City which Moriarty referred to as “a great ship wreck of a Church.” It was one of the largest churches in the world, which naturally did not impress Professor Moriarty. “It may be the biggest but it’s not the most beautiful he said. The mass has been referred to as “an environmental liturgy of contemporary music.” It is performed annually at that church. The calls of wolves, whales and other animals are weaved into the pieces of music sometimes used as melody.
Moriarty also said it was exclesias down there. Where God has come down to earth. This comes from the Greek word Ekklēsia (gathering of those summoned). It was where people gathered. Like the Greek agora, that I remember from my very first day in Athens many years ago led by a wonderful woman—Maria. She pointed out the agora to us. The word exclesias also makes us think of the Carol “Gloria, in excelsis Deo!”
In the music the voices of whales are heard and the alt sax that is used imitates the voice of the whale. And the voice of the loon and the voice of the wolf. When you hear this, Moriarty says, everything is brought in from the cold. You hear whales and wolves singing parts of the mass. It is an earth mass. It is a mass for the earth. It makes the entire earth sacred. And when you hear a mass for the earth how could you ravage it. It is sacred after all.
The Missa Gaia, according to Moriarty, is also the place where the Buddha found enlightenment. Apparently, there is now a temple there where the people have built a temple and called it Buddgaya or Bodh Gaya which is a village in the north east Indian state of Bihar. It is considered one of the most important Buddhist pilgrimage sites and houses at an ancient Mahabodhi Temple Complex, that was built to commemorate the place where the Buddha attained enlightenment underneath a sacred Bodhi Tree.
The mass includes as text the Kyrie and the Agnus Dei. The mass is an environmental liturgy of contemporary music. The “Kyrie” is derived from the call of a wolf, the “Sanctus” from the songs of humpback whales. Man literally learns how to sing from animals. Missa Gaia is not just ecological it is also ecumenical. It wants to contain and include all voices of the earth. Many musical traditions are embraced by the Missa Gaia such as Gregorian chants from the Middle Ages, Protestant hymns, Romantic organ music, African instruments, Latin American rhythms, elements of Gospel music, and even rock music.
The name “Missa Gaia” refers to the “Gaia hypothesis” proposed by scientists Jame Lovelock and Lynn Margulis which provides that “the entire range of living matter on Earth, from whales to viruses, and from oaks to algae, could be regarded as constituting a single living entity, capable of manipulating the Earth’s atmosphere to suit its overall needs and endowed with faculties and power far beyond its constituent parts”.
The Mass had been performed annually at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine at The Feast of St. Francis which is the blessing of the animals.
When St. Francis of Assisi referred to brother sun and sister moon he is really saying, says Moriarty, “I am the little brother.” He is saying they are the great brother or sister. He is not saying I am the great conqueror! He is not saying I am the ruler of the earth. He is saying we are kin! That brings us right back to the ideas of Chief Seattle and the indigenous people of North America and elsewhere. Now that is really a profound new attitude to the earth!
Moriarty asked a very pertinent question: “Why don’t we call the earth Buddgaya?” That it is an enlightened earth?” At least that the earth will one day be enlightened. Of course, he is really suggesting that it is not enlightened now. I think the reason that has not been done is that we need a completely new transformative attitude to nature. Only when we do that can we consider ourselves, or the earth we inhabit, enlightened. We have not yet earned the right to call us or the earth enlightened. Not yet.
If we can do that Moriarty says on Christmas night when he goes to the stable, he won’t have to say humans are alone in the earth. “I won’t be experiencing the awful desolation of us and them.” Until we are enlightened, we will be experiencing the awful alienation of us from the earth. “Maybe our mass has to become a Missa Gaia. When we walk the earth we must realize we are walking in Buddgaya.
Then finally we will be walking beautifully upon the sacred earth.