Getting There Early

Getting There Early

Early last Thursday morning, an hour before the Aquarium opened, I got the rare chance to see our two old lady green sea turtles in their “sun therapy” pool on the roof.  It reminded me of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s quote about getting to church early.

A perk of being a volunteer guide at the Monterey Bay Aquarium is we arrive at 8:30 AM, get a weekly marine biology lesson, and then sometimes the staff takes us behind the scenes, before the visitors show up at 10.

These 60 year old reptiles, who usually swim inside the million gallon Open Sea Exhibit, need regular Vitamin D exposure to keep their shells hard and protective.  So early Thursday is their time for fun in the sun.  Sort of like taking my calcium pills - us oldsters need extra vitamins to stay strong.

Emerson wrote “I like the silent church before the service begins……”  I have seen this quotation in nice calligraphy on signs at church entrances, meaning, “Shut up already before you go into the sanctuary.”

My husband the Unitarian Universalist historian (and great preacher) reminded me that the whole Emerson quotation is, “I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.”

I am very fond of the moment when the Aquarium doors open and hundreds of visitors stream in.  Feels like the prelude, call to worship and opening hymn – I was glad when they said, let us go into the house of the Lord.  Anticipation, discovery, connection, gratitude, community. 

But that quiet moment before the rush, when it is just us few staff and volunteers and the animals, a small moment behind the scenes – precious, priceless, prayerful, peaceful. 

I almost feel like a verger or a deacon, scraping off the old wax from yesterday’s candles, setting out chairs and orders of worship.

In those moments before all those worshippers arrive, we are glad to see the acolytes, the choir, the deacons, the old mother turtles, blessed worship leaders.

__________

Bluetheology.com. When folks come on retreat and service at our Blue Theology Mission Station on Monterey Bay, we often get up early and walk by the sea.  Lovely prelude and call to worship.  I post these ocean devotionals every Wednesday here and on Facebook.  Photo: NOAA

Collecting Shells

Collecting Shells

Do you collect seashells?  Each one is a happy memory of a day at the beach, wondrous search and discovery of beauties big and small, bringing a few home.  Shine them with baby oil, put them in a bowl, so beautiful, precious, fragile, strong, broken, whole. 

These shells I just found last week in an old box high on a back shelf, carefully wrapped in 1977 pages of the Daily Cal newspaper.  I was living in Berkeley then, in seminary.  In the 40 years since then I have moved 5 or 6 times, but I never unpacked the box.  Some of these shells I recognize from Martha’s Vineyard, others the Jersey shore, and I think some are from my mother’s extensive worldwide shell collection, Florida, Africa.   After she died, age 54, in 1979, we donated all her shells to the American Museum of Natural History, where she had worked in their shell department. 

But if these are from 1977 or before, I now have a few of Ma’s shells!  There is no greater joy in heaven than when the lost is found – rejoice with me!

Wondrous circles of beauty, survivors of mighty surf, memories of a day of exploration, legacies of barefoot walking on the sand beside my mother, from the 1950’s to her death.  She taught me their names – moon shell, mussel, conch, sand dollar, periwinkle, oyster, scallop, razor clam. 

To find them again was like finding her again.

These days shell collecting is discouraged by the good folks at the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, and Point Lobos State Reserve, – leave them on the beach so they can make more sand, which is actually tiny pieces of shells.  Remember you are shells and to shells you (sand) will return.  They are skeletons, legacies.  They are subjects, not objects.  I get it and I agree.  I no longer bring shells home.  Nor buy them in tourist shops.

But I am grateful to find these ones again, and I will treat them with honor and gratitude.  Thanks, Ma.

________________

Bluetheology.com – come for time on the Monterey Bay, on your own or with a group, and learn about how God loves the ocean and wants us to love it better. Youth group service trips, adult pilgrimages.  We will see lovely shells, and leave them alone.  Read these Wednesday devotionals on ocean stewardship and spirituality here or at www.bluetheologytideings.blogspot.com

“Remember You Are Ocean, and to Ocean You Shall Return…..”

“Remember You Are Ocean, and to Ocean You Shall Return…..”

It’s Ash Wednesday.  But maybe instead of ashes, we should anoint our foreheads with seawater.

You have heard, in Ash Wednesday liturgies, “From dust you have come, and to dust you shall return, repent…..”  But we Blue Theologians say, “Yes, our origins are humble, but we were not born literally from dust (just as the Bible is not literally a science textbook!).  No, we were born of water, from the primordial seas, where all life began.  Thanks to wise people of faith and science, like Charles Darwin, we can understand and love the miracle of evolution.”

(I was asked to be on a panel about “inspiration” at the Aquarium once – their mission is “to inspire conservation of the ocean.”  They said to me, “You’re sort of in the inspiration business.” After preaching – er, speaking my heart out, based on my pastoral and volunteer experience, about ways to inspire people, someone shyly asked, “Well since you are a Christian, you obviously don’t believe in evolution.  How do you square that with being part of this scientific institution?”  And I said almost without thinking, “I think evolution was one of God’s really good ideas.”  And a tension in the room visibly lifted.  We people of faith  - who know that God gave us brains for a reason and is happy when we use them – we need to speak up about scientific literacy!  Topic for another Tide-ing.)

So on this holy day (here at the Blue Theology Mission Station, we might call it Wet Wednesday) I will get out a favorite spiritual text, Your Inner Fish by University of Chicago paleontologist Neil Shubin. (It’s also a PBS special.) He discovered the fossil Tiktaalik, the animal that transitioned, 365 million years ago, from sea to land, our saline Eve. She has fishy fins and scales, but also the beginnings of hands and a neck.  Shubin explains, clearly and with wit, how so many parts of our bodies bear the marks of our origin in the sea. “We are not separate from the rest of the living world, but part of it down to our bones.”

For example, our salty tears, our salty blood, our salty sweat – they are all the exact same salinity of the sea, legacy of our birthplace.   

So on Wet Ash Wednesday we cry saltily in repentance, we can taste the ocean in the blood of sacrifice, and we smell the sea in the sweat of our Lenten journey. 

Wet Ash Wednesday is a day to repent; we have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts.  Let us confess our failure to honor the womb of our creation, mother sea.

We are in good company on our Lenten pilgrimage by the sea.  Our marine brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers long for us to walk (swim?) humbly with them and with our God.

____________

Bluetheology.com for youth service visits and adult pilgrimages beside Monterey Bay.  I post these Wednesday devotionals on ocean spirituality and stewardship here and on Facebook.