And I think so many of you here know there are few experiences more powerful or more humbling than visiting that sacred earth.

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As the story winds down, Ascher allows the high-wire act of the absurd and the sacred to descend to earth.

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There were thousands of people from all over the world circumambulating this sacred structure at the center of the Earth, all there for a common purpose of praising God, yet each engaged in private reflection oblivious of any other.

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Gaia, Greek Goddess of Earth, was worshipped on the island of Crete as the ancient mistress of all the animals, and the many cults that grew up in her name gave rise to modern geography, the now accepted biochemical Gaia Hypothesis, and what the ancient Greeks considered the most sacred of all oaths: our indebtedness to Earth.

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