Praying the Ocean Icons
I’m writing a brochure (maybe an app?) called "How to Have a
Quiet Spiritual Visit to the Monterey Bay Aquarium." I've already collected tips on where to find
places to sit in the dark and pray ("Pretend the seat in the cephalopods
exhibit is a prayer bench and meditate on the octopus.") Also a list of all the inspiring wall
quotations ("Read the Thoreau quotation – ‘In wildness is the preservation
of the world’ - several times and ask
God to bless and keep the wildness in the sea and the wildness in your
soul.")
Now I'm locating "icons" to venerate. Icons are small intense holy paintings that
many people include in their spiritual practice by contemplating them long and intently,
not for their artistic value, but as “doors between this world and another,
between humankind and God,” as one author puts it. To contemplate an icon is “to gaze into
heaven.” Such images are “visual prompts
for our prayers.”
This Kelp Forest round window is a “visual prayer prompt,” helping
this young worshipper gaze into heaven, and opening for her the door to another
world. When I saw this medieval Italian
painting of the Creation at the Metropolitan Museum in NYC I experienced a new
heaven and earth. Note how the earth is
round and blue.
The writer of Colossians calls Christ the “icon,” the visible
image of the invisible God. A door, a
prompt. I call these blue circles “icons
of paradise.”
_________
Visit
our Blue Theology Mission Station in Pacific Grove for an individual retreat or
a group learning/serving trip about ocean stewardship and spirituality. Icons galore.
Bluetheology.com
I post these ocean devotionals every Wednesday here and at
www.bluetheologytideings.blogspot.com
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