Sandcastle Theologian

This week’s “Ocean Person” is Protestant theologian Paul Tillich, a man I think of as urban and urbane.  Turns out he was a beach rat!

Paul Tillich built sandcastles all his life.  First on the sands of the Baltic Sea as a child and as an adult.  Then in the US, from his 40’s long into retirement, on the Atlantic beaches at his beloved home on the eastern tip of Long Island. 

I have always pictured Tillich as a man of cities, this profound Protestant theologian.  He taught in urban, industrial Berlin, Dresden, and Frankfort until the Nazis forced him to flee Germany.  In 1933 the faculty of Union Theological Seminary all agreed to take a cut in pay to fund Tillich’s escape and new life in the bustle and business of New York City, where he lived the rest of his life.

But Tillich credited time spent on the coast and by the sea with inspiring many of his radical new ideas and new language of theology. 

In his late career reflection On the Boundaries: An Autobiographical Sketch, he frames his whole life as a series of paradoxes, boundaries he straddled, one of which is “The Boundary of City and Country.”  He writes:

“The weeks and later months that I spent by the sea every year from the time I was eight were even more important [than his family background] for my life and work.  The experience of the infinite bordering on the finite suited my inclination toward the boundary situation and supplied my imagination with a symbol that gave substance to my emotions and creativity to my thought.  Without this experience it is likely that my theory of the human boundary situation, as expressed in Religious Work, might not have developed as it did.

“There is another development to be found in the contemplation of the sea; its dynamic assault on the serene firmness of the land and the ecstasy of its gales and waves.  My theory of the “dynamic mass” in the essay “Mass and Spirit” was conceived under the immediate influence of the turbulent sea.  The sea also supplied the imaginative element necessary for the doctrines of the Absolute as both ground and abyss of dynamic truth, and of the substance of religion as the thrust of the eternal into finitude. 

"Nietzsche said that no idea can be true unless it was thought in the open air.  Many of my ideas were conceived in the open and much of my writing done among trees or by the sea.  Alternating regularly between the elements of town and country always has been and still is part of what I consider indispensable and inviolable in my life.”

Tillich can be a bit dense and abstract.  Let me unpack the above quotation for its “marine theology.” 

• Coast and ocean give Tillich an imaginative symbol for the human experience of “the infinite bordering on the finite” and of religion as “the thrust of the eternal into finitude.” Ocean is the eternal, the infinite, while we land mammals, are dependent on the land, the finite, but drawn to the depths, to the infinite.  We are boundary, coastal people, longing for the infinite. 

• The infinite he also calls “the depths” and “the abyss” (which in Greek means ocean depths) and writes in a sermon, “The name of infinite and inexhaustible depth is God.  That depth is what the word God means.”

• Tillich likes the word “dynamic” – the dynamics of faith, and here, “the dynamic, ecstatic ocean” and “the Absolute (God) as ground and abyss of dynamic truth.”

• True ideas come from the open air, and open sea.  Tillich loved cities, but he had studied German Romanticism, that we experience God in nature.  In several sermons he condemns our utilitarian view of nature and how we must hear nature itself longing and crying for salvation.

But Tillich not only thought “deep” thoughts at the sea.  He played there.  I’m reading a biography of Tillich in which this grainy snapshot of a Long Island Tillich sand castle appears.  There are also all kinds of stories about his extensive travels, long walks, mountain climbing, and rambles by the sea. 

And there is this beach story about Tillich that Frederick Buechner relates.

“They say that whenever the great Protestant theologian Paul Tillich went to the beach, he would pile up a mound of sand and sit on it gazing out at the ocean with tears running down his cheeks. One wonders what there was about it that moved him so.

“The beauty and power of it? The inexpressible mystery of it? The futility of all those waves endlessly flowing in and ebbing out again? The sense that it was out of the ocean that life originally came and that when life finally ends, it is the ocean that will still remain? Who knows?

“In his theology Tillich avoided using the word God because it seemed to him too small, denoting only another being among beings. He preferred to speak instead of the Ground of Being, of God as that which makes being itself possible, as that because of which existence itself exists. His critics complain that he is being too metaphysical. They say they can't imagine praying to anything so abstract and remote.

“Maybe Tillich himself shared their difficulty. Maybe it was when he looked at the ocean that he caught a glimpse of the One he was praying to. Maybe what made him weep was how vast and overwhelming it was and yet at the same time as near as the breath of it in his nostrils, as salty as his own tears.”

Why is it so sweet to picture Tillich doing the childlike playful act of making a sand castle?  Why are we surprised to hear of him sitting on a pile of sand and weeping?  Maybe because we believe the stereotype of German sternness or that theologians repress their feelings?  Do we assume that academics stay inside all day?  Can one have such “deep” profound ideas and then spend hours building something that the tide will destroy?  

This ocean person is simply grateful that Tillich followed his countryman Nietzsche’s idea that true ideas must be thought in the open air.  I was unable to finish this essay until I took a walk after the rain.  Thanks, Paul.

Copyright © 2017 Deborah Streeter

Cabin Boy to Poet Laureate

I’m not the only one that likes John Masefield’s 1900 poem “Ship Fever.”  In 2005 it was voted  Britain’s “Favourite Sea Poem” (beating out Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”)   Masefield’s words gave this column its title and they echo for me the wild and clear call I too hear from the sea.  “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.”  How did John Masefield, this week’s “Ocean Person,” come to hear this call?

For most of John Masefield’s (1878-1967) adult life he was a well-known international writer and lecturer, and for over 35 years he was Britain’s Poet Laureate (he was the surprising choice in 1930 over Rudyard Kipling.) 

But his youth and young adult years read like something out of a Dickens novel.  Orphaned at age 10 after his mother died in childbirth and his father had a mental breakdown, he was shuttled from relative to relative, sent to sea at age 13 against his will by an impatient aunt, suffered years of seasickness, sunstroke, and loneliness, until he finally jumped ship in New York at age 19.  More years of hard work and poverty until he published his first collection of poetry, Salt-Water Ballads, including “Ship Fever” at age 22.  He quickly rose in the art and literary world, wrote poems and novels, lectured widely in the UK and US, promoted public readings and received honorary doctorates from Harvard, Yale and Oxford.

Being sent to sea was not that uncommon a fate for boys of the 18^th and 19^th century British Empire.  Growing trade/imperialism and naval war/imperialism demanded more sailors, so a comprehensive system of apprenticing, indenturing and training boys from as young as ten into sailors was established across Britain.  Some boys ran away to sea, others like Masefield were sent/sold by families (in one year, of the 4500 new boy sailors, half were fatherless.)  A whole new field of scholarship about these “boy sailors” describes the promised adventure, travel, and fortune, and the reality of danger, forced indenture and sense of “otherness,” without a home or family or nation.  Treasure Island’s Jim Hawkins and Gilbert and Sullivan popularized a happier version of the life of the cabin boy.

Two stories of Masefield’s youth fit this pattern, and seem particularly Dickensian, how a poor boy’s love of words and stories and learning helped him overcome considerable challenges -  poverty, class, isolation.  In a sense, the sea was Masefield’s savior.  Despite how hard his six years at sea were, with sickness, military hierarchy, loneliness, he also experienced there new worlds, possibility, beauty, surprise, sailors and their stories, enough for a lifetime of poetry and novels.

The thirteen year old orphaned John was living with his reluctant aunt, who probably expected him to do his share of work around the place.  But, as Masefield told it, he was “addicted to reading,” which his aunt “thought little of.” Her idea was that a life at sea would break him of this dubious habit and she left him off at the naval training ship, the HMS Conway.  After three years there he was sent around the world on a merchant ship.  Surprisingly he found that ship life only fueled his “addiction,” that there was ample time for reading and writing, and many long nights hearing sailor stories and yarns.  What his aunt had thought would force him to stop doing he did even more and better.

But after six years he despaired of this life and jumped ship in New York.  This bustling city was probably more of a shock than the move from rural Britain to an international merchant ship.  He struggled to find work and slept on the street.  He worked as a laborer and bar keep.  Finally he got a steady job in a carpet factory in Yonkers.  Long hours and tough conditions, but a steady income meant he could buy as many as 20 books a week, and he devoured works by Dumas, Thomas Browne, Hazlitt, Dickens, Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson, Chaucer, Keats, and Shelley.  (One wonders if he saw his own life in Dickens and Stevenson.)  He recalled later that this reading “set my heart on fire” and he vowed to devote his life to writing.  He finally returned to England, published his first poetry collection, and embarked on his literary career.

Here’s another of his poems, no doubt from a tale he heard at sea. Masefield’s ashes were placed at his request in the Poets’ Corner at Westminster Abbey.

Sea Change

"Goneys an' gullies an' all o' the birds o' the sea They ain't no birds, not really", said Billy the Dane.

"Not mollies, nor gullies, nor goneys at all", said he, "But simply the sperrits of mariners livin' again.

"Them birds goin' fishin' is nothin' but the souls o' the drowned, Souls o' the drowned, an' the kicked as are never no more An' that there haughty old albatross cruisin' around, Belike he's Admiral Nelson or Admiral Noah.

"An' merry's the life they are living. They settle and dip, They fishes, they never stands watches, they waggle their wings; When a ship comes by, they fly to look at the ship To see how the nowaday mariners manages things.

"When freezing aloft in a snorter I tell you I wish -- (Though maybe it ain't like a Christian) -- I wish I could be A haughty old copper-bound albatross dipping for fish And coming the proud over all o' the birds o' the sea."

Copyright © 2017 Deborah Streeter

Monterey Pirates

Are pirates villainous rogues or romantic heroes, desperate drunks or subversive guerrillas?  One thing is for sure, they are good sailors.  Not only do they conquer the high seas, but they conquer other ships on those same high seas, not to mention avoiding Davy’s Locker.  So they definitely qualify to be included in my series on “Ocean People.”

I saw pirates walking down the street in Monterey last week. Two different days and places.

Not unexpectedly I saw lots of small eye-patched pirates on Halloween night, heard many “Aarghs” and “Avasts,” saw little boys and girls bask in a night of being just a little bad.

Then I saw a whole band of pirates, grown-ups, at the Presidio Historic Park, doing their annual reenactment of the 1818 “Burning of Monterey,” when 200 pirates sailed into Monterey Harbor and attacked the Spanish fort, the only time a hostile foreign force has landed on the west coast of the US.  Led by French/Argentinian Hippolyte Bouchard, the pirate band forced the then Spanish governor to retreat and hundreds of residents of Monterey to flee on foot to Salinas, while the pirates looted and guzzled at the fort for a week, then set fire to the town, and sailed off for their next adventure in Santa Barbara.

These big modern pirates reenacting an invasion, an annual event which next year will be the bicentennial, were having as much fun as the trick or treaters, although they tried to keep the smiles off their faces, and used not fake swords but real cannons to make their case.

And while I know that historic pirates and current pirates, like the Somalis in the Indian Ocean, are violent and lawless, I found my heart aflutter at both the little and big pirates I saw.  Maybe it’s a small Johnny Depp crush, but I find something appealing about swashbucklers.

Maybe it’s their rebelliousness; I always root for the rebel.  Turns out many of the Atlantic and Caribbean pirates of the 17^th/18^th centuries were former British sailors who quit the rigid authoritarian navy and set up comparatively more egalitarian and democratic ships, sharing booty (and booze.) Or they were former crew of captured ships, from victim to victimizer. 

Even the Somalis, some argue, are “victims” of a confused and oppressive government that perpetuates poverty and injustice as rich boats sail by. 

Hippolyte Bouchard is likewise portrayed very differently in the Argentinian and Monterey versions of his exploits.  Here in Monterey he is a lawless and violent invader, remembered with just a small sign in the park.  Some locals object to even this simple reenactment; “We should not honor a criminal.”  But in Buenos Aires he is honored on statues, streets, even a postage stamp.  There he is called a freedom fighter and privateer, rather than pirate, who helped bring down the evil Spanish Empire. 

Pirate or privateer?  It’s a subtle difference – depends on whether you have a “letter of marque,” authorization by a state to go pillage and plunder foreign ships.  That’s what Queen Elizabeth I gave Sir Francis Drake, another famous privateer.  The actual high seas hijinx of pirate and privateer are not so different.  It’s simply who gave you permission, the queen or your own greed or initiative or desire revenge.  (Drake also landed in California, but burned no towns.  I wonder if we would tell the story differently if he hadn’t been English?)

Bouchard was authorized in 1815 by the newly independent Argentina to destabilize other Spanish colonies; as Argentina was now free from Spanish oppression they sought to bring other colonies to freedom.  And destabilize he did; the Monterey “raid,” or “liberation” was near the end of a round the world trip where he “destabilized” from Manila to Peru.  He returned to Buenos Aires for a hero’s welcome.  He was not the only one sowing seeds of rebellion.  Mexico, of which California was then a part, was already fighting against Spain, and in 1821 was granted independence and California became part of Mexico.

Bouchard had briefly raised the Argentinian flag over the Monterey Presidio, but three years later we too were free from Spain.  The Mexican flag flew at the Monterey Presidio for 28 years, until 1849 when the US flag was first raised.

I doubt the young Halloween pirates knew they walked the same Monterey streets as Bouchard and his band.   I hope they don’t grow up to be rapists and pillagers.  But a little rebellious spirit in youth and a little loyal opposition in adults is good for any country.  Avast, ye mateys!

Copyright © 2017 Deborah Streeter

The Big Sur Monks

Our series on Ocean People turns to the monks of the New Camaldoli Monastery on the Big Sur Coast.  For 60 years a small community of religious men in the Benedictine tradition have perched and prayed in a remote cliffside complex overlooking the Pacific Ocean.  They devote themselves to a life of worship and contemplation, practicing a ministry of hospitality by welcoming retreatants, and raising money by selling their killer fruitcake.

Anyone who follows an intense spiritual disciple pays more attention to their interior landscape than the exterior; their devotion is to God not their natural surroundings.  But it’s hard to ignore the ocean from that cliff, and the monks have developed a special relationship to their ocean habitat.

I first got to know the monks of the New Camaldoli Monastery on the Big Sur Coast 15 years ago when a small group of us coast activists came together to challenge the US military.  At our first meeting the monks’ clean long white robes stood in sharp contrast to the dress of us Big Sur aging hippies.  But we shared the same concerns.

The US Navy had, without public notice, started flying bomber jets on daily test runs, very low and loud, from military base Ft. Hunter Ligget, inland neighbor of the monastery, along the coast and out over the ocean.  Not only were these flights a shocking intrusion into the peace of the monks and their many retreatants, but it was crazy to see one federal agency, the Navy, wreaking havoc on the long hard work of another federal program, US Fish and Wildlife’s decades long program, in that same Big Sur wilderness, to bring the giant California condor bird back from the brink of extinction.  Biologists were tiptoeing around nests while jets screamed above.

Talk about David and Goliath.  But we started holding rallies and attending many meetings, and generously the monks left their monastery to join in.  It took months, but we were ultimately successful in stopping the Navy’s flights, with the help of our Member of Congress Sam Farr.  I can only assume that the presence of those peaceful and persistent white robed monks had a huge influence on the various government bureaucrats. 

Later I met the monks again at another meeting.  These monks don’t just spend all day in contemplation, even though their great website is www.contemplation.com.   Like all religious leaders, they have to go to a lot of meetings.  This meeting was the Four Winds Council, a remarkable cooperative effort of four spiritually based groups who all offer hospitality in Big Sur’s vast Ventana Wilderness: The Esalen Institute, the Monastery the Essalen Nation of native people (which offers guided trips into the wilderness), and Tassajara Zen Center.  They each draw from different spiritual traditions, but they come together four times a year to share times of spiritual renewal; they had just been in a sweat lodge together.  They also share challenges; that day it was plumbing problems.  I was invited to share with them my Blue Theology ministry of ocean stewardship, and they enthusiastically endorsed it.

I have also spent explicitly “spiritual” time with the monks.  I love worshipping with them at their noon sung mass in the splendid chapel.  (I did that recently on a business trip down the coast, carefully timing the trip with a stop there.)  Some years ago I spent a restorative three days in their remote hermitage in solitary silent retreat.  My spirit is fed just visiting the great bookstore and taking in the view 1300 feet above the rugged coast.

But I also say a prayer of gratitude to them every day that our coast is silent from fighter jets and when I hear of more condor babies bringing this majestic bird back from extinction. That’s the monks’ ministry as well.

Copyright © 2017 Deborah Streeter

Otter Spotters

We wouldn't know much about the ocean without ocean scientists.  These men and women observe, record, collect, experiment, analyze and just notice the ocean and all that lives in it.  In our continuing series on Ocean People, this week I record some observations about sea otter scientists, from a decidedly lay perspective.

- Sea otter have to eat 1/4 of their weight every day.  That's 15-20 lbs of clams, crabs, snails, abalone, and urchins.

- We think only people know how to use tools, but sea otters use a rock or a piece of sea glass to break open a clam or a snail.  Since they are mammals, sea otters have to come to the surface to breathe, where scientists can observe them. There scientists can observe them breaking the snails against a rock they lay on their chest. 

- Otters like a wide variety of foods, but they tend to specialize on one or two kinds, perhaps taught by their mothers.  "Urchin specialists" don't use tools much, since urchins are soft and otters can grab them and eat them with their paws. 

- "Snail specialists" on the other hand, always use a rock to break open the very hard shell and are very fast and efficient tool users. Scientists have seen sea otters bring as many as 30 snails to the surface at a time, using the handy pouch they have in their armpit.  To get their full daily caloric intake, sea otters have to eat 1000 snails a day. 

                                                            *     *     *     *     *

These are some of the factoids about sea otters that I have shared with guests at the Monterey Bay Aquarium every Thursday morning for the past 20 years.   That is, the first 3 factoids, every week I say those.  But the last one, about 1000 snails a day, I just learned that one last week.

It was Sea Otter Awareness Week last week so I went to a lecture at the Aquarium about sea otter tool use by Jessica Fujii, Senior Research Biologist for the Aquarium's sea otter program.  Since otters were hunted to near extinction 100 years ago and only recently has their population been recovering and expanding its range, sea otter research is relatively new and constantly expanding, and I figured I might learn something new. 

The science community can be a bit insular, using its own complicated language and maintaining a sort of superior attitude that they are above politics and policy - we just deal with facts.  At these events we volunteers beg for answers, cause and effect, but most scientists are unwilling to speculate about the possible policy implications of the data.  (If sea otters keep getting caught in gill nets, might it make sense for the scientists to encourage the state fishery councils to outlaw this form of fishing?  No, we just collect the data….) 

But in the 20 years that I've been going to programs like this I've noticed the scientists trying a little harder to present their data and findings in a way that is understandable to the layperson.  And occasionally they are willing to "connect the dots" on the social and political implications of their research - why is the sea otter population not growing at a faster rate, what is in the water that is causing more neurological diseases among young adult otters?   Given that they have to eat so much every day, does the food they eat have neurotoxins in it because they live near us and all we dump in the water? Aquarium scientists have begun to testify at state boards about water treatment plants and Aquarium guests are encouraged not only to change what they put down the drain, but to advocate with state officials.

Jessica presented data on tool use based on many hours of her own observations of Monterey Bay and Central California otters.  She also had done a literature review of 25 other studies that have been done over the past decade on tool use by sea otters in other areas, for comparison.  Scientists are good at comparing one group with another, one factor against another, to find the relevant criteria, what is different.  In this case she compared our Central Coast southern sea otters with Canada and Alaska’s northern sea otters.

With fine graphs and charts, she showed us that overall, otters up and down the coast use tools in 18% of observed feeding.  But the otters in our area, Central Coast, use tools much much more, because they are mostly snail specialists, while in the Aleutian Islands urchins are the main menu item, no tools needed.  She also observed that when other choices are available, like crabs, the northern non tool users will just tear off a meaty claw and bang it against the crab’s own shell, turning the crab into its own destructive tool.  But in the south, as Jessica said, if you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail, and otters use rocks as tools on everything, hard or soft.

She presented her power point well, had some funny graphics about hammers and nails, and answered questions readily. 

She described how researchers study otters, from close up and from afar.  They trap otters at sea and as quickly as they can get a blood sample, weigh them, and attach an ID tag to their flipper with info on where they were found, whether they are male or female, and sometimes a radio tag so they can be found again.  Then they return them to the water.  From then on they can identify individuals from the tags, as they observe otter behavior from shore and keep track of it. Cold patient work with binoculars and GPS and computers and good trained eyes. They count and record how long otters stay underwater, what they eat, what tools they use, how much time they spend grooming themselves and their babies, where they like to hang out, the limits of their range, how many otters there are after being nearly extinct from fur hunters 100 years ago, when they mate, how many babies they have, how individuals vary (based on the tags) and on and on. 

Our Aquarium education staff teaches us guides a college level marine biology class when we begin as volunteers, and then every week gives us updates about new research, information (to 750 of us volunteers.) They get their data from the scientists.  Maybe they told me this before, but I think 1000 snails a day is new data.  I can’t wait to use that number with guests next week. 

I’ve always liked the bumper sticker that reads, “If you can read this…..” and you think it’s going to say, “you’re too close.”  But instead it reads, “thank a teacher.”  Today I want to thank the education staff and the otter researchers for teaching me how better to read, and share with others, how sea otters use tools to get dinner.

Copyright © 2017 Deborah Streeter