Octapalooza

Octopalooza

Pregnant?  Always a good idea to hang out with other moms to be.   And maybe find some nice warm water if you are in the deep dark cold depths!  

10,000 feet below the ocean surface off Big Sur, here are a few of 1000 octopus mothers in a maternity support group, all brooding over their babies, literally turning themselves inside out (tentacles exposed, fertilized eggs underneath) to feed and shelter their youngsters.

Check out https://nautiluslive.org/blog/2019/10/13/return-octopus-garden-monterey-bay-national-marine-sanctuary for more pics.  Note that these highly educated scientists call this surprise discovery “Octapalooza.”

Most octopus give birth alone, but scientists found 1000 of them all together, huddling “expectantly” over the warmer waters of deep sea thermal seeps. 

Like standing with your legs apart over a heating vent – ahhh!.  

Thanks to all you US taxpayers for supporting this government funded science, courtesy of NOAA and the privately funded Nautilus Ocean Trust. 

You think prenatal care is hard to find in our health care system?  This octopus maternity garden, the Davidson Sea Mount, an extinct volcano the size of Mt. Shasta deep in the ocean, is currently protected as part of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary.  But our president wants to open it up to oil exploration.  Hard to have babies when they are drilling for oil all around you. 

I first wrote about this octopus garden exactly a year ago, when the Nautilus expedition first found this unusual site and sight.   It was early Wednesday morning after Election Day 2018.  Like a pregnant mom, I wasn’t sure what the future held. 

Then and now I brood like a mother about the future of my (American) family.  Will our national family be able to find safety and warmth and new life?  Will we make choices based on knowledge and hope, or on fear?  I am inspired today to repost a version of the blog, after the Nautilus went back this month to get a closer look at this octopalooza. 

Last year’s Election Day turned out pretty well – what’s next for our pregnant nation, groaning for new life?

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Our Blue Theology Mission Station in Pacific Grove welcomes youth and adult groups to learn more about ocean families and human families along Monterey Bay, what God calls us to do to protect and preserve Her wet creation.  This weekend we welcome 12 adults from the Urban Sanctuary Church in San Jose.  Be in touch for a visit.  Hold us in your prayers. Bluetheology.com.  You can also read these weekly Wednesday posts on Facebook.

 Photos NOAA and Andrew DeVogelaere.

Swarm

Swarm

“Swarm, Ocean, with fish and all sea life!!.... Prosper!  Reproduce!  Fill Ocean!” 

That’s God on Day Five of creation, in The Message, a contemporary Bible translation.

As a child, I heard God the more restrained Englishman in the King James Version: “Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creatures that hath life… Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas.” 

Just a little more vivid in those modern words.  God is about SWARM! PROSPER! 

“The Bible begins with an orgy of fruitfulness” is how theologian Walter Brueggemann puts it. In his famous (to us minister types) article “The Liturgy of Abundance, The Myth of Scarcity” he reminds us that Creator God blesses everything, EVERYTHING.  By “bless” Brueggemann means God “endows everything with vitality.”  (I like that definition of blessing.). Only when Pharaoh starts hoarding food does the idea of scarcity begin. Will there be enough?  Who gets it?  Fear.

Look around.  Bees, birds and fish – they swarm.  The order of the universe, the blessing of the universe is bounty, vitality, not scarcity.   There is more than enough, life teems, abounds, multiplies.  God wants a world of throng, plenty, tumult. 

Which is, of course, the tragedy of climate change – birds and bees and fish are scarce, disappearing, dying.  Where are the swarms and throngs?

God is about blessing and abundance.  But our selfish actions are curses and extinctions.  As for me and my people, I say, let us chose life, let there be swarm.

(More on swarming: As a Volunteer Guide at the Monterey Bay Aquarium I often say to guests, “Everything in the wild wants three things – find dinner, not be someone else’s dinner, and be part of a family.  Actually that’s my life too.”  These sardines, by swarming, live the life abundant: when one sees a yummy treat and swims toward it, the group follows.  If one senses danger they all turn away.  And it’s like a singles bar, lots of mates close by.  What these sardines are doing is called schooling, or shoaling, or swarming – such great words.  What is your swarm, where is your abundance?)

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Bluetheology.com for adult pilgrimages and youth service trips on the Monterey Bay, celebrating God’s blessings and abundance, with a spiritual tour of Monterey Bay Aquarium, service projects, ocean spirituality.  I post these ocean devotionals every Wednesday here and on Facebook.  Photo of sardine swarm by fabulous diving group PADI.

Currents

Currents

I am currently considering currents as a currency for my ministry.

Ocean currents, river currents, currents in the air, even electrical currents - always on the move, silently, invisibly, irrevocably. They bring life, power, relief, destruction. Currents are the currency of our lives.

(As I write this our power company is turning off the electrical currents peremptorily in much of California because of fire danger. The life and lifestyles these currents support will be much harder for a few days. We lose power here on the coast every winter for days on end - hard and boring, but doable.)

Currents are all about running, “courire” is to run, in Latin. Currents are the “couriers” of the seas, air, wires. In Finding Nemo the California Ocean Current is pictured as a superhighway “running” down the west cost, transporting life from Alaska to Mexico.

“Currency” runs around, moving value from one person or place to another.

All is motion.

Poet and Yale Divinity School Professor Christian Wiman says his calling to be a poet was not a choice - it seized him for a lifetime run. Describing his anguished college decision to leave Econ studies for poetry, he writes, “Could I navigate this strong current and remain myself while losing myself within it?” A current or a calling “moves” us, takes us where it will. It may bring life or loss, or both.

Look at this map of the world’s ocean currents. To describe this system I’ve often used the metaphor of a giant conveyor belt, carrying food, detritus, life, death, renewal, relentlessly, around and around. It even looks a little like a power grid - more currents!

Maybe a better, less mechanistic metaphor for ocean currents is a bustling highway or a relentless marathon runner. Thanks ocean currents for life, climate, beauty. May we navigate all currents, run all races, with endurance and grace.
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bluetheology.com for ocean pilgrimages and service trips on Monterey Bay.  I post these Wednesday ocean devotionals here and on Facebook.

Do Oceans Separate or Connect?

Do Oceans Separate or Connect?

I recently walked from sea to sea.  Not 3000 miles across the US, but 85 miles west along northern England’s Hadrian’s Wall, from Tynemouth on the North Sea to Bowness-on-Solway on the Irish Sea.  I dipped my hand into each sea, as I began and ended, a blessing and baptism.

“Sea to shining sea” is of course a sweet phrase from “America the Beautiful,” but other nations use the same phrase.  Canada’s national motto “A mari usque ad mare" means “From Sea to Sea.” The Psalmist uses water to show God’s power and presence; "God shall have dominion from sea to sea and from the river unto the ends of the earth."

It seems we North Americans use their ocean geography as a way to establish boundaries, these are the nation’s limits.  But Oceanic people experience the ocean as a connector.  Their ocean voyages formed their first identity and they continue to ply the sea for food and adventure – for them the ocean does not so much separate as invite.

I got this idea from Anglican Bishop of Polynesia Winston Halapua and his new fabulous book, Waves of God’s Embrace: Sacred Perspectives on the Ocean.  He writes, “The waves flow. The currents on the surface and deep beneath the surface move. The creatures of the sea — the whale, the shark, and even the jellyfish and the plankton — move. The wind moves on the waves. The dance of people takes up the dance of waves expressing strong relationships — the interconnectedness of energies.”

The two much smaller seas, North and Irish, framed my walk, connecting my first and last step.  They reminded me of all the ways the one world ocean is connected, wave to wave, sea bird to sea bird, shining sea to shining sea.
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Blue Theology.com