When God Drew a Circle

When God Drew a Circle

The geometry of water is circle, not 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 meet sky,sthere’s the faint hint of a curve.

 “I was there when God set the heavens in place, when God drew a circle on the face of the deep.”

The speaker is Woman Wisdom, the divine female, a central character in the Book of Proverbs. “I was God’s first act of creation,” she says, “and I was ever beside God, like a master worker, and daily I was God’s delight.”  (God delights in Wisdom!)

I was there on that first water circle day, she declares, standing beside God who puts the heavens in place, and drew the big ocean, the circular deep. (Prov. 8)

Too bad William Blake’s painting shows only God, and not Lady Wisdom (as her name was then translated, also called Sophia.)  But I adore how Blake puts in God’s hand a compass, to make the circle on the horizon face of the deep just right.  (The Hebrew phrase is literally “to use a tool to draw a circle” - God uses technology on Day One!)

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

Maybe Blake had read St. Augustine: “God is a circle whose center is everywhere, and circumference nowhere.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote an essay, “Circles” in 1841.  Some highlights:

“Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end is a new beginning, and under every deep a lower deep opens.”

“There are no fixtures in nature. The universe is fluid and volatile. Permanence is but a word of degrees. Our globe seen by God is a transparent law, not a mass of facts.” 

“We can never see Christianity from the catechism: — from the pastures, from a boat in the pond, from amidst the songs of wood-birds, we possibly may.”

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

I write these Blue Theology “Tide-ings” each Wednesday to celebrate ocean spirituality and stewardship.  Can you tell I’ve lately been immersing myself in mysticism?  Check out www.bluetheology.com for info on our youth mission trips and adult pilgrimages in Pacific Grove.  Please share.  

A Green/Blue Liberation Theology

A Green/Blue Liberation Theology

“The Earth is groaning, and if she is in pain, all of us are in pain.  We need a new green theology of liberation.”

Preach it, Cardinal Bo! Charles Bo was recently appointed Myanmar’s first Cardinal by Pope Francis. Bo preached a dynamite sermon this week to hundreds of nuns at their regular AMOR conference (Asia Oceania Meeting of Religious Women.)  They’ve never invited men before, but organizers said this year’s theme, “A Call for a Global Ecological Conversion,” needs everyone on board. 

They got their money’s worth in Cardinal Bo.  Quoting Francis’ encyclical on climate change, “Laudato Si: On Care for our Common Home,” and Eastern Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew, who said that when humans cause climate change it is a sin, Bo challenged, “We need a major revolution — a revolution in thinking — a revolution in our theology.  We need to evolve an eco-theology.”

Talk about a revolution in theology: Bo said, “We are gathered here today not against ISIS terrorists.  We are gathered here against economic terrorists and ecological terrorists.  Rich countries bear the brunt of responsibility for global warming.  We are a poor nation.  Rich countries throw carbon into the atmosphere. We suffer and bury thousands after every natural disaster.  Rich nations should use their resources to help solve environmental problems. Science needs to really consider what the options are, because poor countries are really suffering because of global warming — I think that's a warning for the whole universe."

Myanmar is the second most vulnerable nation (after Honduras) for global warming, subject to cyclones, floods and other disasters spawned by climate change.  Just an increase of 4 degrees will inundate and destroy many islands of Oceania, and countries like Australia, the Philippines and Indonesia will see millions of environmental refugees, he said.

Bo outlined several concrete proposals that religious can undertake to help counter ecological degradation, including fighting for ecological justice, undertaking ecological evangelization, paying greater attention to indigenous religious traditions, and listening to Eastern religions and their concept of "interbeing" with nature that affirm the sacredness of ecology more than Judeo-Christian religions do.

Catholic religious life needs to be a counterculture to the greed and consumerism that are behind many environmental issues, and embrace a simplicity and an eco-spirituality exemplified in Eastern religions, Bo said. Buddhist monks are not allowed to own anything except a begging bowl and needle and thread. Catholic religious of the East "need to adopt a lifestyle that is more like Eastern religions: simplicity and veneration of nature."

I learned about Cardinal Bo and the fantastic AMOR women religious of Asia and Oceania from the “Eco-Catholic Blog” I get weekly from the National Catholic Reporter.  (I’m quoting extensively from the blog.)  This blog is full of hopeful examples of actions by local US churches and international Catholic activists for environmental justice. 

Although I call my ministry Blue Theology (for the blue ocean,) I’ll sign up for Bo’s Green Liberation Theology as well. It’s all one planet, and as Cardinal Bo says, she is in pain, that’s how drastic and dangerous the ecological crisis is.

I believe he is quoting scripture here, Paul’s description in his Letter to the Romans that the coming of the Cosmic Christ changes things so much that it’s like all of creation is groaning, he says, like a woman in labor.  It is the suffering pain before a new birth.

Let’s heal and liberate the suffering earth, and be midwives of her new blue/green birth.

I write about Blue Theology, ocean spirituality and stewardship, every Wednesday.  We host youth mission trips and adult pilgrimages in Pacific Grove, Ca.  Four different groups are coming this spring, kids, college students, intergenerational groups.  We still have some openings this summer.  Bluetheology.com

https://www.ncronline.org/blogs/eco-catholic/myanmars-cardinal-bo-calls-green-theology-liberation

Cyptic Sound

Cryptic Sound

In the foundation of Winchester Cathedral, the crypt, stands this solemn sculpture, a study in contrasts. 

Ancient is the arched stone undercroft, predating even the medieval Gothic sanctuary that soars above it.  But the sculpture is modern, 1986, installed by British artist Antony Gormley. 

The crypt is cold and hard and impersonal; we associate crypts with death and graves and fear.  People mostly stay upstairs in the nave.  But the statue depicts a very alive human figure, indeed it is a made from a cast of Gormley’s own living body.

Crypts form solid hard foundations, dug deep in the dense dark earth.  But this crypt becomes soft and fluid every winter when the region’s persistent groundwater floods it as much as three feet deep.  The dark space becomes shiny and shimmering, reflecting the water in motion.  The sculpture was fashioned intentionally to withstand and even embrace the months it is partially submerged, wet and fluid.

Crypts are quiet, silent as a tomb.  But Gormley named the statue “Sound II.”  Sound?  One writer suggests Gormely wants us to look at the sculpture and “be still for a moment, to ‘sound’ the depths of our own spirit.”

The hands of the human form are cupped and the face is looking down at what it gently holds – water.  Not only does the sculpture stand up to its waist in the winter water, but an inner pipe brings water up into the hands. (So we are told – no crypt tours in the winter, too wet.  I was there in June and it had just reopened two weeks earlier.  The floor was still damp.)

There are tombs in the crypt, but this sculpture is about life.  All life is born of water, seeping from ocean ancestors.  It reminded me of Venus rising from the sea atop a similar wet cup.  The dark fecundity of the space was like a womb.  All these wet sources of life.

Upstairs in the nave are fabulous ancient religious sculptures and icons, saints and deities.  Thank you to Winchester Cathedral for placing new religious art in the depths, honoring water, birth, baptism, and rebirth.

I write every Wednesday about ocean water spirituality.  I also post it at www.bluetheologytideings.blogspot.com.  Our Blue Theology Mission station offer youth mission trips and adult pilgrimage retreats in Pacific Grove, doing ocean stewardship, sharing in ocean spirituality – still some openings this summer.  Bluetheology.com