About

Hutton’s Unconformity, Siccar Point. The exposure shows nearly vertical rocks called greywackes formed in an ocean environment. They are overlain by more gently dipping red sandstones formed on land. The contact between the rocks represents an ancient land surface and a gap of around 65 million years. During this period, the older rocks were changed by folding, faulting, uplift and erosion. Exposures like this one gave us the concept of “deep time”.

Alex Staton

As a fifty-something year old hydrogeologist and former church minister, I have had an interesting life. I trained as a geologist, completing my degree in 1990, before sidestepping into theological training and ministry in the Free Church of Scotland. I served as a minister in the Highlands of Scotland for several years but resigned following a period of ill health, specifically brought on by then undiagnosed bipolar disorder. After a period of recovery, I retrained and began a career in environmental consulting where I have remained for nearly 20 years. My interests reflect my life’s journey.

My main interests are focussed around faith, Christian and otherwise, and its relationship to science. I try to avoid interminable discussions of creationism, which I find largely unfruitful and a long way from the far more interesting things emerging out of physics and bioscience. I am also interested in music and the arts. My taste in music is eclectic ranging from the Baroque to some of the serious talent seen among some of our youngest composers. I thrive on the obscure. My guilty pleasure is found in 80s rock music. I am also interested in mental health, both as a victim of long-term ill health and as one that tries to encourage others as they endure similar difficulties.

I am a Christian. I’m a very poor Christian and probably would not pass muster in very many quarters. My outlook on life is informed in part by my background in a Highland Calvinist denomination but also by the travails that go along with mental illness and a constitutionally sceptic and bloody minded disposition. I love the Free Church of Scotland and much of what it stands for. But I am no longer a member, still less an office bearer. I simply record my appreciation of its witness and note that everything I may post reflects my own view and not that of the Free Church or any other Christian denomination.

I should finish by adding that I am a gay man. I think sexuality is important but that it’s not everything. Far too much effort is being put into debating what sexual identity means, much of it generating more heat than light. I do not “identify” as a gay man as though one’s sexuality trumps all one’s other characteristics. I think we need to move away from the politics of identity and learn to simply get along. It is OK that folk do not agree with me or approve of my choices in life. I do not need their acquiescence. What I do ask for is their respect. This may need to be earned. But I promise to show proper respect to those that disagree with me.

A geological unconformity represents a hiatus that may reflect millions or tens of millions of years in lost deposition. I have posted a picture of the famous Hutton’s Unconformity at Siccar Point, St Abb’s, Berwickshire. One could ask what might have happened during a period that resulted in so great a discontinuity between what lies above the unconformity and what lies below. It’s the hidden that fascinates me. Can we at least attempt to fill that gap? Similarly, can we find what appears to be missing when apparently irreconcilable points of view meet?