Fire and Rain

Fire and Rain

“Just yesterday morning they let me know you were gone…I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain….but I always thought that I’d see you again.”

It wasn’t just yesterday morning.  Actually it seems like forever, but it was just last Friday when the Soberanes Fire forced us and our neighbors to leave our Big Sur home with an hour’s notice.  As I write, the fire still burns out of control, over 25,000 acres, 3000 firefighters, growing in all directions.  Our house in Palo Colorado still stands as of today, but 20+ of our neighbors, some very very dear friends, hear from far away that their homes are gone and think, “I always thought that I’d see you again.”

I’m staying in a lovely home in Carmel of kind friends.  I walked early Sunday morning to the corner store to get the NY Times (can’t usually walk to the store from my remote house!)  It was a little surreal to see this charming village, skies eerily green through the smoke.  As I walked the aisles, James Taylor came on the sound system, “I walked out this morning, and I wrote down this song.  I just can’t remember who to send it to.  I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain….”

At first I got mad – Fire and Rain!? I know full well there’s a damned fire raging and I know we’re getting no rain soon in this crazy climate, in November if we’re lucky.  How dare you play that song when a fire is threatening me and the land I love and devastating dear friends?

Then I indulged in some James Taylor memories and affection.  I remembered reading something about the song’s Suzanne, a tragic story, the plans they made put an end to you. I recalled Taylor’s own long painful journey through addiction and recovery.  Moving through the stages of grief, I remembered concerts, sing alongs, you’ve got a friend.

I thought, OK, yes, he is just stating the simple truth:  I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain.

I usually write something in these Wednesday posts about the ocean and spirituality, Blue Theology.  Oceans are wet.  Fire is not.  The ocean is actually helping to put out this fire.   Helicopters are pulling buckets of water out of the ocean and dropping it on the roaring flames.  Oceans are saving lives.

I went to a funeral today of a beloved church matriarch, Lois.  The family announced after the service that we would process from the church to the cemetery along Oceanview Blvd in Pacific Grove.  “We will drive by the sea because Lois loved the ocean; let’s take that route with her one last time.”  This view of Asilomar is near her house, and she is buried close to her beloved sea.

So while I wait and worry, hope and despair, I’m taking walks by the sea.  I’m remembering that the ocean can help douse a flame of pain or sorrow.

A friend wrote of their destroyed home: “We got the hard news tonight that the fire has taken what we have put our hearts into building at Rocky Creek. It took the structures but it did not take the creative life we built there with family and friends….We accepted the risk of knowing that the land belonged to greater force and that someday we may be faced with this. A risk we full heartedly accepted. The day has come and we are now on our knees at the power of the wild.”

I’m not ready to tie this up in a neat bow of “lessons learned” and “the phoenix will rise” and “the wildflowers will be spectacular next year from these searing flames.”  Lives and landscapes have been forever painfully changed.

Walk by the sea and let the ocean help douse the flames.

(Chad King photo of Asilomar, NOAA)

Blue Blessings

Blue Blessings

Did you know we had Blue Theology swag?  Here are some teens from Catholic parishes in Castroville and Watsonville whom we are hosting this week at the Blue Theology Mission Station.

We’re watching the Aquarium’s summer deck show, “Turning the Tide” about this area’s multicultural history of fishing and eventual conservation; Native Americans in tule boats, Japanese abalone divers, Chinese squid fisherman with lanterns, Sicilian sardine fishermen – all reenacted in the Great Tide Pool.   Informative and inspiring.

Every youth or adult who takes part in our program goes home with a beautiful Blue Theology bag, water bottle, notebook and non-plastic pen all emblazoned with our whale tale logo.  Branding.

So much fun to see 25 kids and adults walking around the Aquarium with their bags proclaiming they are pilgrims more than tourists, blue theologians.

Our great local Bishop Garcia had come to a ministers association meeting and shared his concerns about the many kids and teens living in migrant agricultural worker camps on the Central Coast.  We said:  How about Blue Theology days of learning and serving God through ocean stewardship?  After some very creative fundraising and remarkable sharing of ideas and faiths, we came to this week, where each day kids come on a school bus from different parishes.  Monday was Greenfield in South County.  After a morning at the Aquarium, the youth spend a couple hours doing citizen science, counting sand crabs at Asilomar Beach for a big study on climate change.

Since they are teens, we’ve got lots of food – pancake breakfast when they arrive, yummy lunch packed in those cool bags, big BBQ at church at the end of the day.  Throughout the day we stop for prayer along the bay, silent meditation under the fish roundabout in the Aquarium (other visitors stop and notice!) and at the end of the day the Diocese staff leads worship based on Pope Francis’ encyclical on climate change.

In my installation last week as Minister for Blue Theology I said our ministry is one of bridging, advocating and guiding.  We are doing all three with this group; sharing Christian ministry across old divisions, guiding the youth, some of whom have limited experience of the sea, into ocean stewardship, and hearing the powerful advocacy words of their Pope.

Many blue blessings this week.

Gifts from the Sea

Gifts from the Sea

I wish I were smiling in this picture!  I really was so very happy to be installed as Minister for Blue Theology last Sunday at La Selva Beach Community UCC.

At least it shows you some of the many gifts I have gotten from the sea over the years, symbols of so many memories and blessings and friendships.
-The fish cloth is from Mombasa Kenya, Indian Ocean, I got it in 1969.
-The shells are from my mother’s collection and mine – Florida Gulf of Mexico shells from the early 50’s, Indian Ocean shells, whelk from Martha’s Vineyard 1960, anemone from Big Sur coast 1995.
-Todd Evans brought me back from El Salvador the enamel fish cross (near my hand) in 2004 after he heard me talk about Blue Theology at his retreat center Wellspring.
-The Blue Blessings Bowls: Anne Swallow Gillis gave me one, and one was a wedding gift (1979) and is by an artist who also worked on Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party.  Where did I get the other one?
-I’m wearing two stoles.  My Blue Theology one that Sandy Johnson made me (https://www.etsy.com/people/sandyjohnson46#) and one that Patricia Wood gave me on Sunday.
-Wonderful altar and chancel art by Sally Williams of the La Selva church.
-One bottle of water is left on the altar from the 40+ that folks brought for the Gathering of the Waters part of the service.  Each person poured and spoke aloud the names of many local creeks and taps and beaches and bays.  Two friends sent me water in the mail – Kathryn Schreiber sent a jar from her “Holy Temple” Point Reyes National Seashore, and Sandy Johnson (of stole fame) won the prize for “water from farthest away” - from Minnehaha Creek.  Minnehaha feeds into the Mississippi, which provides water for 2/3 of the US.  She posted a sweet picture of her granddaughter helping to collect the water.  That’s another gift – they spent a day together and sent me water.
-This photo itself – Evelyn Vigil took it afterwards.
-Many other gifts – wonderful friends and colleagues and family and new people who were there.  Bountiful reception spread.
-I made an insert for the Order of Worship that is a “Sampler” of some of these BT posts and some history of the ministry – let me know if you want one.
-The ministry was affirmed, I was authorized, and I will now be held accountable (the 3 A’s) as a UCC Minister for Blue Theology.  Thanks be to God!

A Wild Call That May Not Be Denied

A Wild Call That May Not Be Denied

“I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied…”

On Sunday I will be installed as “Minister for Blue Theology” at the La Selva Beach Community UCC church.  (All invited!)  Here’s part of my sermon, “God is Blue.  And Wet.”

The ocean calls, it beckons. I can almost hear it, just three blocks away.  If the waves were crashing with a high tide I probably could hear its call.  (Pick up my big conch shell).  Now I hear it.  It’s calling.  The ocean is always calling.  Night and day, it calls.  Just as the moon pulls the tides through space, we feel the ocean pulling us, calling us to its side.  Come.

John Masefield wrote those haunting words, “I must go down to the seas again….” in his poem “Ship Fever.”  He was a sailor and a poet (and English Poet Laureate from 1930 until his death in 1967.)

I know this poem from when I was a child.  I think my mother recited it to me, as she did so many, often at bedtime.  (“It was many and many a year ago, in a kingdom by the sea….”)

Deep calls to deep, says the psalm poet of the Bible.

The ocean has a voice, a presence, a power.  For Masefield it has a wild voice, lifting in him a longing that is like a fever, the ship fever that gives the poem its title.

“I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way and the whale's way, where the wind's like a whetted knife…”

My call to ocean ministry is not a vagrant gypsy life (I hope!)  but I will commit to following the gull’s way and the whale’s way, and of course God’s way.  It’s a wild call and a clear call that cannot be denied.

(Photo: Shannon Lyday, NOAA’s SIMoN photo library.  This is a whale whose way I’ll follow!)

Gathering of the Waters

Gathering of the Waters

One look at this photo tells you I’ve been doing Blue Theology for a long time – this was 2002! 

The occasion was a big Ocean Fair to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the federal designation of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary.  I was serving on the Citizens Advisory Council for the Sanctuary at the time and offered to gather interfaith religious leaders and lead a “Blessing of the Sanctuary” as part of the celebrations. I assured the federal NOAA staff that I was a firm believer in the separation of church and state, but if they wanted some kind of ritual alongside all the speeches I’d be glad to put it together.  Happily they welcomed the idea, and later featured this photo in the news reports – we do look good!

My dear friend, Catholic priest Scott, (center) brought a conch shell and burning sage in an abalone and some sweet acolytes.  John the Ohlone leader brought his sacred staff.    I brought my blue blessing bowl.  Everyone brought readings about water from their sacred texts.

Representatives from many of the 15 National Marine Sanctuaries were there, Atlantic, Pacific, Great Lakes.  I had asked them, and others I knew who were coming, to bring a small vial of water with them from their home tap, creek, river, lake, or ocean.  40 or so folks came up onto the stage, kids, federal employees, solemnly said where their water was from and poured it into the common bowl.  I held it up and said a prayer of thanksgiving blessing on the water. 

Then we processed, clergy and acolytes and kids and workers, with the bowl held aloft, through Monterey’s historic park, past the old Customs House, down to this little beach by the wharf.  We heard many sacred readings about water, and then I poured the water from the bowl slowly back into the bay, the sanctuary, the holy place.

From many places far and wide, the drops came together as one, and then we returned the gift, all back to its source, mother ocean.

My friend Nashwan, right, brought water from the farthest away – Mecca, most sacred place of his Moslem faith.   This was just a year after 9/11, and Nashwan had visited many of our churches patiently explaining Islam and its wide landscape.  When I left the little beach after the service I looked back down and there were Nashwan and Ann, the president of the synagogue, deep in conversation.  Gathered together by the one water?

I’m being installed as Community Minister for Blue Theology in 10 days, July 10, 2pm, at La Selva UCC, south of Santa Cruz, having finally figured out how to have my denomination formally authorize me for this long time ministry.   All are invited. 

We’ll begin the worship service with a Gathering of the Waters.  Same blue bowl.  To build the community.  And so we can remember again that all water is one, a cycle of blessing and bounty.  This ministry of 15 years will enter a new phase, a new stream, a new current, a new wave.

I Was Glad When They Said Unto Me.....

I Was Glad When They Said Unto Me….

“….Get Into Your Sanctuary This Weekend!”  came the email invitation from NOAA.gov.

OK, I love going to the House of the Lord, but why is the federal government urging me to go to church?  Some right wing plot, or a breach of the First Amendment?

No, they mean my NATIONAL MARINE Sanctuary, because this weekend, June 25-26, is the second annual NOAA “Get Into Your Sanctuary” weekend.

They are right, of course, about the ocean being a sanctuary, a holy place. What a great way to worship, to feel religious and spiritual, by getting wet and sandy, having fun, swimming and diving and surfing and boating, seeing wonderful sea creatures.  How great thou art, oh government, to call our amazing nationwide system of marine park reserves “Sanctuaries.”  They too are holy homes of the divine. 

Or you could just lie on the beach and pray and sleep.  Sing sea shanties.  So many ways to say Thank You God, for oceans and water and air.

The Sanctuary Weekend is cosponsored by “Every Kid in a Park,” another federal effort to encourage active participation in the great outdoors.  When President Obama was in Yosemite last week he reminded us of his two year offer (ends August 31, 2016) to every 4^th grader and their family of free admission to all national parks.  The Yosemite rangers told him over 5000 4^th graders have already come there free, and that over 1100 of them who came from nearby Merced County had never been to Yosemite. 

Obama introduced the plan with this familiar phrase, “No matter who you are, no matter where you live, our parks, our monuments, our lands, our waters – these places are your birthright as Americans.”

So any of you who work with 4^th graders, including church school teachers  - go to <everykidinapark.gov> and download the cool lesson plans and the forms for the free passes for the kids and their families, and then go to a national park! 

Or visit a marine sanctuary!  (They’re mostly free already.)

I recommend visiting your church sanctuary this Sunday too, but if you have to choose, I’d say, get outdoors, get wet, breath deep, say thanks.

(We are beginning a busy summer of youth groups and adult retreats at our Blue Theology Mission Station in Pacific Grove and we’ll be spending time both in our lovely sanctuary and the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary.  Still some room in August.  Bluetheology.com)

Christ of the Abyss

Christ of the Abyss

“If I dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there….” (Psalm 139)

“Christ of the Abyss” is an underwater statue in 50 feet of Mediterranean water near Portofino Italy.  It marks the place where a diver died in 1947, the first Italian diver to use SCUBA.  His friends placed it there a few years later, and it is still often visited.  You can see how it has been  well anointed by ocean sponges and corals.  Il Cristo degli Abissi.

There’s a replica in Florida waters, caste from the same bronze, that’s easier to see - you need only snorkel, not dive, in just 10 feet of water near Key Largo.  Divers placed this one as well in honor of another beloved friend.  That plaque reads:

“If I take the wings of the mornings and swell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand will lead me and your right hand hold me fast.  In memoriam.”

Love the typo!  Swell, not dwell.  All these things happen in the deep, the abyss.  Dwelling, Swelling, Upwelling.  Even there we will find God, even there we will be held fast.

“Abyss” is Greek for “deep.”  In some Bible translations abyss means the chaos waters of creation, the waters under the earth whence all rivers flow, the Hebrew word tehom (surging water-deep). The word has come to have a scary or negative meaning, abysmal.  But it’s just that deep source of all creation, all water, all life.

I’ve seen the same quotation from Psalm 139 carved on a lovely memorial bench at Pt. Lobos.  I sometimes get a little nervous about Bible quotes on state and federal property (eg Grand Canyon).  And of course in my need to be CORRECT I must point out that the Hebrew psalmist, writing long before Jesus, imagined a wet and wonderful Yahweh God in the uttermost parts of the sea, and would not have recognized this Christ figure in the depths.

But even with my nervousness and quibbles, I am still so moved by this statue.  (Google “Christ of the Abyss” to see more images.)  My sense of God is so often intellectual – My head confirms that of course God is everywhere.

But this statue takes me to a new deep place. Here is God/Christ submerged and covered with sponges!!  The raised arms, the calm presence, God breathing under water – such comfort.

Even here God holds fast and holds me fast.  Dive deep.