May The Blue Circle Be Unbroken

May The Blue Circle Be Unbroken

These blue circles seem holy to me, like round icons of wet interconnections. 

-The 1972 iconic NASA photo of our blue planet.  www.visibleearth.nasa.gov

-The “Blue Circle of Life” logo of the fantastic Ocean Conservancy.  www.oceanconservancy.org

-The blue heart logo from Wallace J Nichols’ Blue Marble Project - he has given away over a million blue marbles to remind us to care for our blue ocean planet.  (The Dalai Lama and the Pope have one, I carry mine in my purse.)  www.wallacejnichols.org/130/blue-marbles.html

-The new logo of my beloved denomination, the United Church of Christ – it used to be red and black, but now it’s a blue circle and wave! www.ucc.org 

In the Bible’s creation story in the Book of Proverbs, there’s another wet circle: “When God set the heavens in place, God drew a circle on the face of the deep.”

The geometry of water, our most basic and beloved blue, is a circle, not a square.  Water curves.  A puddle on the counter is round.  Rain drops are bulbous.  Ponds don’t have corners.  When I survey the wondrous Big Sur horizon, where ocean meets sky, there’s the faint hint of a curve, and the waves below curl to meet the shore.

For God so loved the ocean that God drew its circle, and the circular ocean gives us everlasting life.

The circle of God, the circle of water, the circle of ocean.  May the circle be unbroken.

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I write these Blue Theology “Tide-ings” devotionals each Wednesday to celebrate ocean spirituality and stewardship, here and on Facebook.  This month our Blue Theology Mission Station in Pacific Grove is hosting four individuals and couples on “spiritual tours” of the Aquarium, with prayer and pilgrimage walk.  Fall is lovely on the Central Coast.  Be in touch.  Bluetheology.com