THIS SPRING, I moved to California. Nature, culture, family, and work beckoned my partner and me, and once we arrived, we found ourselves immersed in sweetness: picking roses in our friend’s garden so fresh they smelled like citrus; sharing weekly dinners with my brother; and swimming in the Pacific Ocean. In that water, I’ve felt swallowed by mystery. The airborne salt, the bone-cold temperature, and the wild waves refine my ability to listen to the hum of the earth. In the Christian tradition, the ocean’s role in shaping consciousness is robust. Through their writing on “contemplative ecology” and reflections on the Pacific, contemplative theologian Douglas E. Christie, Lutheran scholar Lisa E. Dahill, and mystic Thomas Merton have helped me embrace the ocean as a healing partner.
Christie, author of The Blue Sapphire of the Mind: Notes for a Contemplative Ecology, describes “contemplative ecology” as dual-natured: a spirituality that centers the natural world and “an approach to ecology” that relies on “contemplative awareness.” He posits that connecting contemplation to the environment helps make us more “porous,” more attentive, and clearer about the world as a “sacred [and beautiful] whole.”
It is especially important, and equally challenging, to see the world as sacred and beautiful amid the global climate crisis.
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