Women Diving

I’m returning to my theme of “Ocean People,” this time in fiction.

Anna Kerrigan, the protagonist of the new novel Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan, is the only woman on a team of divers during WWII, building and repairing war ships at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.  Her first job at the Yard is with other women sorting trays of machine parts for the Missouri, under construction there.  But out the window she sees the divers, and is powerfully drawn to the job’s mystery and danger.  With persistence and by proving her skill, even with the 200-pound clumsy suit and helmet, she wins a job and grudging acceptance by the male hierarchy.

Anna also dives one night into the East River in search of the body of her father whom she believes was killed and dumped there by organized crime.  For this illicit dive she “borrows” the Navy equipment and convinces two men on the team to help her.  She finds her father’s wristwatch, but no body.  She barely escapes both the river’s currents and the shady crime boss who has shown her where to look.

By the end of the book she has pulled off another escape job from these various dangerous dead ends and maneuvered a new identity and yet another diving job in California. 

It sounds like a great adventure story, and it is.  Or an interesting historical novel, as it also is.  But mostly it’s a tale of Anna diving deep into the dark and dangerous waters of her own life, the challenges of Depression poverty, a disabled sister and disappeared father, the unglamorous parts of New York and the perils of life pre-birth control, diving in and emerging as her own person.

45 years ago I studied with theologian Carol Christ and read her book Diving Deep and Surfacing, an analysis of women’s spiritual quest.  We read the then young Margaret Atwood’s second novel, Surfacing, and Adrienne Rich’s poems, including “Diving into the Wreck,” and Kate Chopin’s 19^th century novel of female emancipation, The Awakening.  In all these (and other) feminist classics women dive into ocean depths and find freedom both in the depths and in the surfacing. 

Christ help us see how different these women’s spiritual quests are from the traditional male hero’s tale of a pilgrimage or quest to a distant land or mountain top.  For these fictional women and for many women in myth, (like the ocean deities I wrote of here earlier this year,) the quest is downward, not up, to the dark not light.  We young feminists and ministers-to-be wondered if these unusual (to us) tales were inspired by women’s anatomical interiorness, our wombs, unlike external male anatomy.  We rejected the idea that anatomy is destiny, but we dreamed of a non-patriarchal culture where all could find the holy not only by looking out or up and into the light, but in and down and into the dark.

Years later, I am now an ocean inspired theologian (as well as a feminist) and I wonder if the ocean might also be a source and image of spiritual meaning because everyone begins life in our mother’s amniotic fluid, the exact same salinity as the ocean.  We all begin our spiritual quest, for life and meaning, in an inward sea.

I wrote a column here a few months ago about diving, my own experience snorkeling, and stories from Monterey Bay scuba divers.  All these dive stories were likewise “spiritual,” awe-some experiences of quiet and beauty and mystery.  As with many spiritual quests, there is always the possibility of danger, going so deep you don’t return.  And like Anna, many divers risk their lives not just for beauty, but for a purpose, in my local divers’ case, pulling up old fishing gear and trash.  The ocean hides beauty but also the trash we think we can hide in its dark.  Another rich diving metaphor – underwater we see not just beauty, but wrecks, the lost.

Egan did a lot of research on the rich history of Navy divers for her novel, but I have no idea if she knows of Christ’s work or this metaphor in feminist spirituality.  Even so, the novel took me back to those images, especially from Atwood and Rich.  Both authors paint vivid pictures of women diving not for pleasure, but to seek a lost father or wrecked ship, risking life by leaving dry land and sunlight.  And then returning to the surface deeply changed.

It’s worth reading Rich’s poem in full.

“I came to see the damage that was done and the treasures that prevail….”  Like all her work, it is fearless and full of mystery.  Atwood’s 1973 novel is powerful also, especially given her lifetime since of writing chilling tales of women and power. 

Anna Kerrigan’s brave diving eventually does help her find her father.  But more moving is how she finds her own life’s calling in the depths.  She will not keep sorting unnamed machine parts nor get stuck in the limits of the post-war “feminine mystique.”  She keeps on diving.  While most poetic and mythic tales are of a single dive that reveals the mystery or truth, Anna makes a lifetime of diving, literally and figuratively, finding in the diving and surfacing a new freedom and her true self.

Copyright © 2018 Deborah Streeter

Clean Waterways and Healthy Oceans

I’m “Marching for the Ocean” Saturday June 9 in Washington DC alongside tens of thousands of other ocean advocates, “a growing chorus of supporters including environmentalists, scientists, surfers, divers, students, parents, teachers, celebrities, fishermen, social justice advocates, small businesses, major aquariums, deep sea explorers and citizen activists.” 

Last week I wrote about the difference between a march and a parade, and how the Trump administration is helping me stay in shape by inspiring me to go on all these marches (Women, Science, Our Lives, Ocean). 

Today, rivers and oceans and Washington’s “forgotten river.”

The Ocean March begins on a river.

The Ocean March organizers are clear that we march for all of Earth’s waters; all connected, all mutually dependent, all should be healthy and clean:

“Every community has the power to protect our local waterways, lakes and rivers that lead to the ocean.  We stand united to protect all the waters that give us life.  Contribute to building this blue wave.  Celebrate and protect all that our waters – salty, brackish and fresh – provide us.”

So June 9, the day of the March begins on water, at 7 AM with a flotilla of kayakers meeting on Washington DC’s Anacostia River and paddling to the Southwest Waterfront Park where they will leave their vessels and walk several blocks to the starting point of the March in front of the White House.

Actually, some members of this flotilla hit the water two weeks earlier, May 19, when they set out for DC from Atlantic City.  A brave group called “AC2DC Paddle/March to the Ocean,” vows, “What better way to get to the March to the Ocean than to paddle there?  As we paddle and navigate a section of our country's amazing coasts and waterways, we will meet up with various coastal organizations and fellow ocean loving individuals, pick up trash along the way, and participate in local events.”

They will set out that Saturday morning from the fabulous Jersey Shore beach at Avalon, after a ritual called “Hands Across the Sands.”  The next day they’ll cross the dangerous Delaware Bay from Cape May at the tip of New Jersey to Rehoboth, Maryland, and proceed along the ocean coast, south past Chincoteague, to Cape Charles.  Then they will turn northwest into Chesapeake Bay, camping on Tangier Island.  Last leg is up the Potomac River to the point where the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers meet, arriving the Friday night before the March.

I hope to meet these intrepid kayakers from my home state that Friday night in DC.  Their schedule says they will attend the Sign Making workshop that night at the Earth Conservation Center on the banks of the Anacostia River.  I had already planned to go as well, to make my sign, but now I look forward to meeting these brave seafarers as well.

When I think “DC river” I think Potomac River.  But DC is bordered on two sides by rivers, and the Anacostia is called DC’s “Forgotten River.”  Long polluted by coal and cement plants and a horribly outdated sewage system, the low-income neighborhoods alongside the river endured for decades raw sewage and dangerous chemicals within a few miles of the President’s mansion.

In 1992, a local effort to clean up the river began when “nine unemployed young men and women living at Ward Eight's Valley Green public housing community volunteered to change their lives by restoring the obscenely polluted Anacostia River. Motivated by the belief that their strong hearts, minds, and muscles could reclaim the Anacostia they pulled on waders, climbed into the polluted Lower Beaverdam Creek and started to prove that their river and their lives were worth saving. Their struggle launched a community youth movement to take back their Anacostia River. ​

Following their leadership, thousands of youth from troubled neighborhoods near the Anacostia River laid the cornerstone for a solution to the city's intertwined problems of pollution and poverty. Our vision is that every young person in the Corps and throughout the District not only survives, but also thrives. Our collective effort on behalf of disadvantaged youth is a down payment toward transforming our city's greatest assets: our young people and our natural resources.”

That’s the mission and history of the Earth Conservation Center and its Youth Conservation Corps on the banks of the Anacostia.  That’s where we’ll make our signs and I’ll meet my new kayak friends.

The river is no longer deadly, and no longer smells.   Saturday morning those same kayakers will show their support of river cleanups by launching from the “forgotten river,” paddling past the Conservation Center, with their new signs, and paddling around the point to the Potomac and the Ocean March.

Next week I will write more about the Ocean March’s different participants and partners, and maybe about some of the cool slogans and come-ons the organizers are using.  Here are a couple favorites:

• “Restore the blue in the red white and blue!”

• “Together we are as big as an ocean!”

Copyright © 2018 Deborah Streeter

Marching

I’m going to Washington DC next month for the March for the Ocean, June 9. In the weeks before I go, I’ll be writing here about marching, and about why march for the ocean.  On my return, I’ll tell some stories about my experience.  The ocean is rising, and so are we!

Trump has been good for my workout plans – I have been marching like crazy ever since he was elected.  I joined 500,000 of my closest friends in Oakland for the Women’s March the day before his inauguration.  A few months later I walked down Market Street in San Francisco with thousands of folks in white coats, for the Science March.  In March I walked a couple miles in Monterey with many high school students in the March for Our Lives, protesting gun violence.

On June 9 I will “March for the Ocean” in Washington DC.  Folks in at least 40 cities will have other ocean marches, kayak parades, beach cleanups, flotillas, bay swims and other events. 

Why go to all these marches, why march?  Because I need to do something in the face of Trump’s horrors and evil.  Because during and after each march I have been hugely inspired simply by being with so many other like-minded and like-hearted folks.  Maybe we get some media attention and raise the public’s awareness of an issue, be it women, science, violence, ocean.  To “demonstrate” my opposition. 

It’s a little selfish, or self-indulgent, these Saturdays on the streets.  I get a rush from being with all these folks, go home and brag a little about it, and then I go back to feeling helpless in the face of this evil regime. 

But it’s something.  And just by talking about it (“I’m going to the Ocean March in DC!) and writing about it, I am maybe raising some awareness.  Marches are visual, they are all about numbers and speakers and signs.  I will be visual too, wear my new March for the Ocean T-shirt, post pictures on Facebook.   I will also wear my minister’s stole, with ocean creatures on it, to signal and signify that I am part of a religious community that supports ocean conservation. 

What should my sign read?  I saw one at the Science March that said “Love Your Anemone.”  Suggestions welcome.

I wrote some church colleagues in DC that I was coming, asking if anyone in their congregations was going, organizing a group etc.  No one had heard of the Ocean March.  They did say that the same weekend is the DC Pride Parade.  Talk about double booking!  But when I looked at the website for each event, I see that they coordinated timing: Ocean March 8AM-3PM, Pride 4:30-7:30PM, different neighborhood.  How considerate.  I could bring my rainbow stole also.  I will certainly find some of my liberal church friends at the Pride Parade.

Got me thinking about the difference between marches and parades.  Marches seem more about protest, parades about celebration.  Pride parades certainly began as protests, and were first called Gay Liberation Marches, when they began in 1970 in NYC, Chicago and LA on the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in NYC in 1969.  Gradually they became more celebratory than political, Pride rather than Liberation, especially in accepting cities.  The San Francisco Pride Parade feels like Mardi Gras. 

Perhaps a difference between march and parade is the difference between a public demonstration AGAINST something and FOR something.  I’ve marched against wars many times in many cities, against our wars in Vietnam, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Iraq. 

But this generation of marches, the Trump era marches, are FOR something, March for Science, March for Our Lives, March for the Ocean.  God knows we have much to protest against.  Maybe it’s just marketing, to be FOR something is more appealing.  But in the same way that conservation psychology teaches us that “hope stories” are much more effective in changing people’s environmental attitudes and behavior than are “doom and gloom stories,” so it may be that marching FOR something, indeed parading FOR something is more effective in both inspiring and motivating people. 

We hope.  The March for Our Lives wasn’t just the march, they also organized lots of voter registration.  The March for the Ocean is part of Capitol Hill Ocean Week, CHOW, a week of ocean conferences and lobbying visits to legislators that the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation has organized for 20 years.  I went once years ago and we visited our senators and encouraged them to vote for ocean friendly legislation.   They didn’t seem any more aware of ocean issues then than my religious colleagues were last week.  Still work to do.

But this year CHOW will be more than just lectures and banquets and awards for best ocean volunteer.   An impressive alliance of ocean organizations has organized this powerful and celebratory March.  Next week I’ll write more about the organizers and the issues.

At minimum, marching FOR something means you are trying to “walk the talk,” “put your body on the line,” all those good old protest phrases.  The Ocean March has added a few new ones: “The ocean is rising and so are we.”  “Get in motion, march for the ocean.”  “It’s not too late to turn the tide.”  Let’s hope.

Copyright © 2017 Deborah Streeter

Ran, Norse Ocean Goddess

This is the fourth in my series on mythological ocean deities.  I am trying to give them each voice. Like the ocean, they are all creative and  powerful.  They are also a little annoyed at how they have been portrayed, marketed and coopted.  This  week’s ocean deity, Norse goddess Ran, is really pissed, angry and deadly.  Watch out!

 I am the ocean and I am rough and dangerous and deadly.  My name is Ran.  That means “theft” and “robber” in my native Norse language.  I live to steal your life and rob from you all that is precious. You think you can sail on me for fish or to travel to a new land?  Stupid ones, you are nothing in my eyes.  Beware!!

People draw pictures of me with a net.  Not a helpful generous net to catch fish to feed their family.  No, a deadly net to strangle and drown them.  I drown and kill anyone who is stupid enough to trespass on my realm.  Stupid fuckers, you die on my watch.

You nice literate readers of this educated series on ocean deities -  don’t you admire Sedna and wish you had a Te-Fiti in your culture?  Well you don’t, you are so separate from all life forces created you that you think the ocean is a pretty backdrop and sweet salty friend.  Am I kind and gentle?  NO!!!  Will I embrace you with comfort and give you new life?  NO!!!

I am here to steal your life, suffocate and drown you with my net, and generally to end your life.  That’s what oceans do and that’s what I do.

You stupid ungrateful humans – you know I am the force of ocean and death, yet you draw a picture of me like this, as if I were a sweet, quiet and malleable handmaid to my husband Aegir.  Your pathetic myths say he is also an ocean god, and we are some kind of power couple.  Please, he’s just a pathetic jotunn, a giant, just half god, half mortal, just a demigod.  Look at this picture, it’s as if I were serving him!  Fuck that shit!  I am the dangerous powerful force of the sea and he is just a bit player in this drama. 

Only good thing he did was help me give birth to our beloved nine daughters, the waves.  More about them in a minute….

I just want you to get it that I am angry and loud and dangerous and scary.  I am the ocean.  Watch out!  My job is to rage and destroy!  Sure I have lots of fish here to feed you.  And I can be your path to a new home or a reunion with old friends.  Good luck travelling my path and fishing my harbors.  Don’t forget, my job is to kill you, trap you in my nets, drown you, crush you and then eat you.

So my sweet nine daughters are the waves.  Aegir and I named them Biodoughadda (Bloody Hair) Bylgia (Billow), Drofn (Foaming Sea), Dufa (Wave), Hefring (Lifting), Himinglaeva (Transparent on Top), Hronn (Wave), Kilga (Cool Wave) and Uor (Wave.)  Ok, we had some great sex and it was fun to give birth to these nine beautiful daughters.  Aegir kept saying, where are the sons?  Where are my boys I can play catch with?  Too bad, buster.  All girls and we rule the waves.  We are bloody and transparent and cool and foaming and lifting. IE, we are women, deadly and dangerous. 

So just try sailing on our bodies.  No luck.  I am Ran, ocean of all and mother of the waves.  Sail on me and die.

Copyright © 2018 Deborah Streeter

Te-Fiti, Pacific Ocean Goddess

Carl Jung was asked, how should modern people relate to ancient myths?  He responded, “The point is to dream the myth onward, and give it a modern dress.”  The Disney empire has been “dreaming the myth onward and giving it a modern dress” for decades, with films like Little Mermaid, Mulan, Aladdin, and recently, Moana, about young heroes and heroines from mythology challenging the mythic forces of evil.

It’s easy to criticize some of Disney’s retelling of these myths. Only in the last couple year have Disney movies like Frozen and Moana finally had some strong female leads whose dream is not rescue by a prince.  But the “modern dress” these young women wear make them look more like models with anorexic bodies than empowered heroes.  Even so, the stories are vivid and Disney can tear at your heartstrings with image and music. 

Todays’ “Ocean Deity” is Te-Fiti, whom I learned about from Disney’s film Moana.  From what I have read she is more important in the film than in traditional Polynesian mythology.  Like so many women of myth she is more symbol than actor, and never speaks.  Here I imagine here what she might say about herself, and her film appearance.

Te-Fiti is my name.  I am the Pacific Ocean goddess and creator of all life.  If the name sounds to you like Tahiti, you are right – it means literally “a faraway place.”  My Polynesians people are good at long journeys to faraway places, we sail from island to island, across the sea.  At the beginning of time I created the vast ocean, and then I made all the islands, these small safe and lush homelands mid the mighty sea.  Sometimes I am depicted as a living island myself, able to mold and shape terrain and flora and fauna.  

I’ve never needed much acclaim or worship.  I can just look around me and see all the life teeming in my islands and my sea and glory in my creation.  But I have to admit it was fun to have a big role in the movie Moana.  I even got a few nice notes about the film from the other mother goddesses I’ve met at Goddess Camp, saying I did a good job.  And could we have Goddess Camp on my island this year?

“Goddess Camp” is the yearly party/retreat/reunion we female creation deities have every spring.  Tiamat and Nammu started it with a fantastic week in the Fertile Crescent.  We’ve danced and sung in the Bering Sea with Sedna, India with Parvati, and who can forget that Aegean spring with Gaia and Demeter? 

Since we all were there at the beginning of time, creating earth or sea, animals, plants, people, we have lots of memories to share, stories to tell.  We dance and eat a lot. 

Recently we’ve added a lamentation time to our gathering, ritual wailing in sorrow and anger at the ways climate change is taking such a toll on our beautiful creations.  It’s good to be together with sisters in the hard times as well as the celebrative.

It’s interesting, actually, how well we get along, sharing both our pride in our work as well as our sorrow at its destruction.  We’ve notice when the male deities get together there’s lots of strutting and competitive games.  The food is better at our sister gatherings as well.

If you haven’t seen the movie, quick plot summary: Moana, an independent thinking Pacific Islander teenager, saves the world from destruction by restoring my heart, which has been stolen by power hungry men seeking to control the earth.  Moana’s grandmother, one of my disciples, tells her the ancient stories of how I created the ocean itself and then all the islands in it.  She helps Moana find my stolen heart, a small shining green amulet, and encourages her to sail beyond the reef into the feared ocean and restore my heart.  With help from the usual Disney bumbling animal sidekicks and the reformed thief demigod, Maui, Moana confronts the evil destructive goddess Te-Pa, source of fire and volcano, who it turns out is me without my heart.  If you take away the heart of any creator, you get destruction.  Bravely Moana restores my heart and the earth and ocean are saved.  

I think my sister creation goddesses are a little jealous of me because of the movie.  Lin-Manuel Miranda hasn’t written a song for the sound track of their lives.  They have reminded me, in a nice way, that I am actually a pretty minor character in Pacific Islander mythology.  The destructive gods as usual get more notoriety, Pele and Maui and Te-Pa.  Myth writers and Disney execs seem to prefer the evil stepmothers, the destructive Ursula and Malificent, to the creative life affirming females. 

Maybe it was a goddess #MeToo movement that helped Disney realize they needed not only a heroine whose triumph was saving the world, not being saved by a prince, but also a triumphant positive female force for creation, not destruction.  Whatever, I’ll take it, if it gets my sisters to come party at my house.

And to lament.  Demeter said she wanted to come to the South Seas to weep and ululate as women mourners do in Greece at a death, in this case, the death of so many islands to sea level rise and climate change.  It does feel like my heart has been ripped out and that the evil gods and goddesses of greed and conspicuous consumption are triumphing over our band of sisters.

The party is this week, at the equinox, when spring begins in the north, and ironically, autumn arrives in my part of the world.  Will we emerge whole from this winter?  Can we sisters of creation rise again with new life?

Copyright © 2018 Deborah Streeter