The eastern seaboard of Sydney was the place of my youth. As I’ve grown older it has become an important place of memories, but also a place that I’ve tried to understand more deeply. Recently I walked along a stretch of this land from Maroubra to Coogee.
The coastline is mostly sandstone formed about 220 million years ago during the Triassic period. Later, about 200 million years ago during the Jurassic period, it was uplifted.
The stone is referred to as Hawkesbury sandstone, a very hard rock, often with vertical jointing which, combined with coastal erosion causes large blocks to break away forming vertical cliffs with boulders at the base.
For more detail follow this link.
My first book
My first book Seen and unseen: A century of Stories from Asia and the Pacific, begins a short distance from the site of this last photo. This is a transformative place for me.
As I wrote in my book:
One develops many spiritual connections with God’s creation. I don’t say this in a simplistic way. My theological understanding of the cosmos sits side by side with my scientific understanding. Perhaps this is best summed up in these two quotes.
The same dialogue of communication and mystery of communion is detected in the galaxies, where the countless stars betray the same mystical beauty and mathematical interconnectedness. We do not need this perspective in order to believe in God or to prove His existence. We need it to breathe; we need it for us simply to be. The coexistence and correlation between the boundlessly infinite and the most insignificantly finite things in our world articulate a concelebration of joy and love
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, “And God Saw That Everything Was Good: The Creation Story and Orthodox Theology”
It cannot be emphasized enough how everything is interconnected. Time and space are not independent of one another, and not even atoms or subatomic particles can be considered in isolation. Just as the different aspects of the planet–physical, chemical and biological–are interrelated, so too living species are part of a network that we will never fully explore and understand. A good part of our genetic code is shared by many living beings. It follows that the fragmentation of knowledge and the isolation of bits of information can actually become a form of ignorance, unless they are integrated into a broader vision of reality.
Pope Francis, Laudato Si 138
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