Mattering

‘Matter is spirit moving slowly enough to be seen”

Pierre Tielhard de Chardin[i]

CAPPADOCIA

Ancient land of volcanic rock peppered with tiny openings carved by human hand over millennia to provide shelter for kith and kin

Rock is the body that holds the score; the keeper of deep time; the element that most reminds us of our place as humans in a world made of aeons not soundbites; the slow-moving, solid foundation of life which both shelters us from the storm and yields to the touch of our fragile existence.

INHABITING THE EARTH

Descending through the cloud as we land at Kayseri airport, the wide expanse of central Anatolia stretches out below as far as the eye can see. Bleached and arid, the rocky plain looks barren from this distance. After the sensory feast of Istanbul, the land appears mute and empty - inhospitable, pitiless and forbidding. Stepping into the hermetically sealed vehicle which will take us further into this Cappadocian wilderness, I feel my heart contract. Why have I journeyed all this way, to a place so devoid of life?

Only now as I write this, surrounded by the comforting green of my English garden, do I begin to comprehend the opaqueness of my preconceptions about this ancient land of rock and sky, which has been a cradle, a sanctuary, a wellspring for life over millennia. Here, in this ‘inhospitable’ place, shaped over aeons of deep geological time, men and women have carved out an existence. They have moulded rock and the rock has moulded them.

The first peoples of Cappadocia, the Hittites, arrived and settled here sometime around 1800BC. They found shelter within the softness of sedimentary rock, carving cave dwellings and deep underground ‘cities’ into the remnant debris of ancient volcanic ash (‘tuff’). The scale of the engineering feat of these underground structures is hard to comprehend. Burrowing more than 85m below the surface, the ancient rock ‘city’ of Elengubu encompasses 18 levels of caves and tunnels. It was in near constant use for thousands of years. New discoveries are being made all the time, revealing a massive subterranean network of smaller ‘cities’.

Cave dwelling carved into the naturally sculpted conical rock spire

Digging deep below the surface, these courageous cave dwellers were intimately acquainted with the foundational basis of existence. Matter. Rock to them was not lifeless, not barren or desolate, but foundational, sheltering and receptive. Rock shielded them from the baking sun and freezing cold, maintaining a constancy of temperature which sustained life. It provided protection from enemies and foe. Rock allowed them to form sustained relationships with the intimacies of time and the locality of place. Rock tables, carved by excavating a negative space from around a central rump of ‘tuff’, created opportunities for the sharing of stories and the recollection of dreams. These were a people who truly in-habited the earth.

Later, these cave dwellings provided sanctuary to early Christians fleeing persecution from the forces of the Roman empire. Rejecting the mores of a prevailing culture which had become severed from the foundational values of their faith, these solitary hermits and monastic communities bequeathed us frescoed churches hewn into the rock, their walls still dazzling over a thousand years later with the deep blue of lapis lazuli (this one at Gorem took my breath away). 

Tokali Kilise Fresco (mid 9th century)

There is something profoundly humbling about entering into hollowed ground, there to discover traces of human tenderness, fragility and longing (a ‘hallowed’ ground perhaps). Standing in the frescoed cave, I imagine innumerable moments of contact between rock and flesh, each gesture a testament to the possibility that human beings, with all their frailty and imperfection, have the potential to add to the grace of the world. It is perhaps in realising this potential for grace, that our lives come to matter.

MATTERING

Breathing in the soft coolness of the air in the lower levels of a Cappadocian cave complex, I try to picture men, women and children dwelling there together in darkness. Theirs was a life profoundly shaped by their relationship with the tangible and the material. In this intimate acquaintance with matter, they must have experienced their own incarnate substance in all its gravity and slowness. The concept of instant gratification could not have been further from their everyday reality. As they inhabited the earth, so too they must have inhabited their own bodies. I sometimes wonder if the modern obesity epidemic speaks to our unconscious longing to feel the weight of our existence once more, to inhabit our creature selves, to be more than thought. Standing in the near pitch darkness, I sense how alive the cave dwelling peoples must have been in all five senses. It occurs to me how little we know of a natural world that is now so rarely touched or handled.

Why does any of this matter? Well, ‘matter’ and ‘mattering’ is precisely the point, the nub of what I begin to understand. In an age of increasing immateriality, in which the foundational ‘stuff’ of rock, earth and flesh is increasingly denigrated to the realm of the primitive, and the  virtual reality of digital experience is separated from matter and elevated, my encounter with the tangible substance of rock and the span of geological time feels revelatory and restorative.

Cradled in these rock dwellings, I begin to see how shallow the modern gaze is cast. We live in an age which seems eager to forget where we come from. In our rush to claim the future, we discount the debt we owe to those who came before us.  We think we are the smartest people to have ever walked the earth, because we have given birth to AI, because we can communicate across continents at the touch of a button, because we have breached the atmosphere and travelled into outer space. We forget the seismic leaps, the ingenuity, forbearance, and creativity of our ancestors. Everything we conceive, create and communicate now stands on their shoulders. We owe these early peoples everything.

Looking back from an age in which we expect instant gratification, where we struggle to bear the frustrations and uncertainties of our incarnation (our slow, uneven progression through time as embodied beings), we would do well to learn from our rock dwelling ancestors. Rock bears an imprint of their innermost thoughts in sculpted form and mineral pigmentation, imprints which bear witness to the wide arc of our human story.

As a psychotherapist, I place myself in the deep time of an oral tradition of storytelling as old as the hills. I am the curator of a sacred space in which men and women tell their stories and experience (through the warmth of my attention) their unique significance. Placing my practice in this context of deep time affirms that my life’s work is part of something larger, something essentially human. My work is neither insignificant nor supremely significant. It matters in the context of a greater story, the arc of which stretches back in time before me and out far beyond me. My significance cannot be comprehended within my own short life.

Tielhard de Chardin, Jesuit priest, philosopher and mystic,  points to this wider arc of deep time when he writes: 

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.

And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through some stages of instability —
and that it may take a very long time.[ii]

Time is the essential medium through which any creative process manifests, be this the elemental  sculpting of sedimentary rock by wind and rain over aeons, or the carving of a church by hand into rock, or the shaping of a human life. Influenced perhaps by his enduring interest in geology, Teilhard understood that the journey of psychological maturation (as individuals and as a community of beings) also takes time. We are neither in charge of this journey through time, nor are we at its mercy.  Tielhard offers us a beautiful evocation of the ‘slow work’ of a lifetime, describing it as ‘grace and circumstances acting on your own good will’. ‘Grace’, ‘circumstance’ and ‘will’ combine over time to bring into form (into ‘matter’) the world in which we are to dwell.

What we learn from rock, and from the enduring patience of these rock dwelling peoples, is that aspect of ‘will’ which involves persisting and sustaining. Rock is load-bearing and orientated towards gradual change over time. It is patient, protecting, regulating and upholding. It stores the memories of the past and conveys our present dreams and cares into the future. We inherit the maturational journey of our ancestors and we each have our own ‘slow work’ to do. This work involves passing through stages of instability. It asks that we bear with an ongoing sense of incompleteness (our ‘being on the way to something’). Severed from the patience of geological time, we have become impatient. In our rush to skip over the ‘slow work’ of our becoming, we risk passing on precious little grace to our descendants.

Inspired by my encounters with the enduring properties of rock, I find myself wondering what imprint from my own life (if any) will stand the test of time. ‘What do I most want to manifest, transmit and pass on?’ I ask. ‘What truly matters to me?’ These rock-inspired musings draw me to consider the foundational values which underpin my life.  Three values stand out to me. Beauty. Care. Understanding. I know how much these values matter to me because of the strength of my reaction whenever I encounter their opposites: ‘ugliness’, ‘indifference / negligence’, and ‘arrogant presumption’.

From earliest childhood beauty has felt as necessary to me as water, air or food. Starved of it for any length of time, I find myself dwindling. Witness to beauty I am altered. Or perhaps more accurately, I am ‘altared’, in the sense that Ursula Le Guin suggests when she writes that to witness fully, is to become the altar of the thing witnessed [iii]. Beauty seems to exert a kind of gravitational pull. It invites me into conversation, draws something out from me, calls for my participation. Beauty challenges me to be equal to it, to bring forth my own beauty.

Care is perhaps too small and neat a word to convey the value I place on the wholehearted engagement of attention, imagination and effort. I trouble myself with the small things in life (a conversation, setting the table for a meal, or choosing a present for a loved one) because in my experience care elevates functional tasks and everyday interactions into opportunities for dedication. Care takes many forms - love, anger, heartbreak. It is the great invisible shaper of our lives. Care signifies that a person, situation or event matters. Of course through our care we surrender the shield of indifference. In touching the lives of others and being touched by them, we become vulnerable to loss. The gift of care is nothing less than the restoration of tenderness and intimacy to our shared existence as relational beings. Perhaps this is why Bayo Akomolafe insists that the primary work for us in times of upheaval and loss is to ‘make sanctuary’ within ‘a village of care’.[iv].

Understanding, it seems to me, is that aspect of knowing and being known which constitutes the active principle of love. In my work as a psychotherapist, I have come to believe that understanding (and being understood) is not a prelude to transformation. It is the heart of transformation itself.  Before healing, before progression or change, we long to be held in the cradle of understanding, to be intimately ‘known’. If we are to understand each other, we need to look beneath the surface, to stand under our preconceptions. For as long as I can remember I have had this orientation towards depth, towards what lies beneath the surface. (In my search for roots, origins and sources I have studied both history and psychology). 

In my experience, understanding arises primarily through relationship. Significantly, the ‘under’ of under-standing stems from the PIE root *nter-  which means ‘between’ or ‘amidst’ (as in the Latin inter). This same root gives us ‘intermediate’, ‘interaction’, ‘intercourse’, ‘internal’ and ‘interest’. To understand we pay attention to what bubbles up in the spaces between us.  This interplay stops life freezing over into a glacier of preconceptions. It keeps life fresh and open to new possibilities. In this original sense, under-standing protects us from the hubris of ‘knowing it all’.  

Like the conical rocks of Cappadocia, these values of beauty, care and understanding seem to have endured the weathering of time. Whilst I sense them clarifying with age, I recognise that in some shape or form they have been with me from the beginning. I take no credit for them, they come by grace from a source deep within me and from my familial and social inheritance. Appreciating their faithfulness and endurance, it occurs to me that the values we hold dear act as the  foundation of life, the  basis of our existence, the rock from which we shape and mould a life. 

We are called upon both to inhabit our core values and to shape them into forms capable of cradling, sheltering and sustaining life. Perhaps this, after all, is what it means to matter.

A CATHEDRAL OF LIFE

Alongside its properties of cradling, sheltering and sustaining life (mattering), rock reminds us of one other vital quality which is fast disappearing in a culture obsessed with exposure and display. Rock conceals. Beneath its unremarkable exterior lie secret passageways, hidden hollows and invisible channels. Rock reminds us that there is always more to life than meets the eye.

Early one morning, leaving the baked heat of Uçhisar, I decide to head down a dusty path winding down between the conical rocks towards a thin ribbon of green. Approaching the valley floor, the air becomes lighter and the acoustics soften. Bending to my right, the path enters a narrow tunnel of green which, to my surprise, resounds with calling birds and chirping crickets. Slender trunks soar up towards the deep blue sky, creating a dappled path before me. A short distance along this path, I stumble upon a slow sleepy tortoise enjoying the cool of this shady oasis in a small  puddle. And that’s when it dawns on me. Hidden from the merciless heat of the sun, in concealed channels beneath the rocky surface, an underground stream, invisible to the eye, nourishes the roots of trees, creating a cathedral of life.

Cathedral of life - Pigeon Valley, Cappadocia

I pause for a while and allow the freshness of this unlikely gift of grace to shower me with its greening. And that’s when it happens. This moment I will never forget.

A nightingale sings.

Here. In the rocky wilderness I had thought barren, this fragile, ephemeral, and impossibly shy bird sings in the glittering canopy above my head, sings without ceasing as though its bright heart knew no limit. I am undone. Even now as I listen to the recording I made at the time, I feel the arrow of this joyous sound fly straight to my heart. Every inch of my defended body yields. And I wonder if those early peoples might have heard this same song and been touched by its grace. Perhaps they too were undone by this cleft of kairos meeting chronos.

It strikes me that this is perhaps what Tielhard de Chardin means when he warns against rushing to ‘reach the end without delay’. The day a nightingale sings in the desert I am not impatient to reach the end of anything. I am just curious and drawn to explore an unlikely ribbon of green in the desert. I have a hunch there is more down there than meets the eye. ‘Grace’, ‘circumstance’ and ‘will’ combine to create an experience of communion in which the only thing that matters is the song of a single nightingale. 

I AM ROCK

The cradling, shape-shifting, sheltering, concealing, transmitting rocks of Cappadocia remind me where I come from, the debt I owe to people who dwelt in darkness. Placing my hand on the cave walls (where countless hands have touched before me), I feel a new affinity. I realise, I am rock. My bones and teeth owe their structure and strength to Calcium and Phosphorus; Magnesium supports my nerves and muscles; Sodium and Potassium regulate my blood pressure. Without these rocky minerals, invisible to the human eye, I would simply not exist.

Rock is the body that holds the score; the keeper of deep time; the element that most reminds us of our place as humans in a world made of aeons not soundbites; the slow-moving, solid foundation of life which both shelters us from the storm and yields to the touch of our fragile existence. Our relationship with rock has shaped us historically, biologically and psychologically over countless generations. We are geological.

Rock, it seems, is not inhospitable, pitiless or forbidding. Not barren. Rock is life-giving.

I owe it my life

Cave dwellings near Uçhisar, Cappadocia

Words and images by Susan Holliday, July 2025

END NOTES

[i]   Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J. (1 May 1881 – 10 April 1955) was a French Jesuit priest, palaeontologist, philosopher, mystic, and teacher. Influenced as a child by his father's deep interest in natural science, Teilhard studied geology, botany and zoology at the University of Paris. After the French government banned all religious orders from France and the Jesuits were exiled to the island of Jersey in the UK, Teilhard deepened his knowledge of geology by studying the rocks and landscape of the channel islands. Teilhard's life work, encapsulated in his seminal book ‘The Phenomenon of Man’ was predicated on his conviction that human spiritual development is moved by the same universal laws as material development.

[ii] Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J, excerpted from Hearts on Fire,‎ Loyola University Press US, 2005.

[iii] Ursula Le Guin, U.K (2016). ‘Contemplation at McCoy Creek’, Late in the Day: Poems 2010-1014. P M Press.

[iv] Bayo Akomolafe ‘How to Make Sanctuary in Times of Loss’ in Atmos Volume 9: Kinship, 2024.