Wet Spiritual Sitting
I feel closest to God at the Monterey Bay Aquarium when I am
sitting down.
I like to sit right down on the floor and admire the fish. Or lie on my back looking up. I feel God there, as I pretend I too am way
down deep and looking up. We invite our
youth group and adult visitors to sit or lie down and “con-sid-er” God in the
ocean, which means to “sit with” God, as we, recumbent, celebrate and honor the
wet Holy Spirit.
I’ve been writing here these past weeks about various ways to
have a “spiritual visit” to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. That’s what we offer on our Blue Theology
pilgrimage service trips. Try this at any
zoo or park or on a hike in your own community.
Scroll back to see my previous posts about finding quiet, quotations, and
icons. (Join our Blue Theology Mission
Station Facebook Group or Page and get a notification of every new post.)
Today, the topic is sitting.
Religious traditions teach so many spiritual “practices.” I invite you
to sit, wherever you are.
On retreat at the Camaldolese Monastery in Big Sur I have sat
in my single room and read the words of their 10th century founder
St. Romuald. “Sit in your cell as in
paradise. Put the whole world behind you
and forget it. Watch your thoughts like
a good fisherman watching for fish. The
path you must follow is in the Psalms.”
With our Blue Theology groups at the Aquarium we invite them
to sit. A great spot is the fish
roundabout. Ignore other visitors and
just lie down on the floor and watch that big school of anchovies swim around
and around above us.
Usually when we are at a place of entertainment we want to
keep moving!! Let’s see more! Experience! What’s next!
No. Sit. Stop.
With my friend Meg and her little baby we spread out a
blanket she had ready in her pack and with the fabulous little Colette, we just
sat on the Aquarium’s strong hard floor, watched the crowd go by, admired a
beautiful Ansel Adams photograph on the wall, noticed other folks slowing down
as they saw us sitting. We prayed in
thanks. We had been a bit stressed. This calmed us all down.
On a different day, I sat with a group of ministers on a
retreat day at the Open Sea Exhibit and quietly waited, watching the fish from
down deep (pictured.) We call this sitting exercise “Holy dry scuba diving.”
It’s tempting at the Aquarium to rush and run– how much can I
see? I recommend slowing down, find a
place to just sit and watch, see and experience. Pray with the fish. Pray with the people.
I sometimes SIT on Saturday mornings for an hour with the
Monterey Bay Zen Center. “The aim of
zazen is just sitting, that
is, suspending all judgmental thinking and letting words, ideas, images and
thoughts pass by without getting involved in them.”
Last year I wrote here about a Blue Theology group from the
San Lorenzo United Church of Christ that spent a day at the Aquarium for a
spiritual retreat. We decided to
“consider” the ocean, ie, to sit with it.
Here’s what we experienced. Come
– sit with us……
Consider
“Find a time, every day, when
you will ‘consider’ – when you will look deeply, attentively, thoughtfully at
one thing. Don’t do anything else but that one thing. It may be looking
intensely at the leaf of a tree, or a feather, or an icon, or one or two words
from Scripture.
“Don’t move on. Stay with it.
Look into it. Try to see – to see its inscape.
“You may find it very difficult
at first. You may get very bored. But keep looking at it.
“It’s charged – charged with the
grandeur of God.”
Every morning I receive a daily
email “Word” from the brothers of the Society of St. John the Evangelist, an
Episcopal monastic community in Cambridge, Mass.
Early Saturday May 20 I read Br.
Geoffrey Tristam’s encouragement that we “consider.” I learned a new word, “inscape.” I vowed to consider deeply that day.
By 9:30 I was at our Blue Theology Mission
Station in Pacific Grove, greeting 15 folks from the San Lorenzo Community
Church UCC who had come to spend a day doing ocean stewardship and
spirituality. It was an intergenerational group, from kids to grandparents.
Before we set out for a day of learning and
serving, I gave them each (as we do each group) a Blue Theology backpack and
notepad.
Ten year old Owen wrote carefully all day in
his notebook, as we took a pilgrimage walk by the Monterey Bay National Marine
Sanctuary, stopped four times to offer prayers of wow, help, sorry and thank
you, talked at the Aquarium about the amazing diversity in God’s creation and
found too much stuff at our beach cleanup that did not belong in nature.
I told them how I had read Br. Geoffrey on
“consider” that very morning. I said the
word’s derivation was “to sit with.” I
encouraged them to consider, to sit with, God’s ocean and one small thing in
it, most certainly charged with God’s grandeur.
Owen got it.
He noted it. He did it. He sat with.
(Actually he considered way more than one thing. He considered the harbor seal moms and pups,
the hammerhead sharks, the sea otters in the bay, and more.)
He considered and he was “considerate” of
others and of ocean life. He gave me
hope.
We love having individuals and groups of all
ages spend a day or more at the Blue Theology Mission Station – we hope you’ll
consider it. Bluetheology.com. I post these weekly Wednesday devotionals
here and on Facebook.
Be in touch.
