​Ocean Spiritualities
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depth, mystery, danger, flow, peace, immensity, nurturance, endlessness,
questing, transformation, wonder, beauty, treasures, and monsters.
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all images from Unsplash

Transcendent Depth and Width
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There are many kinds of ocean spirituality.  They include the many moods and emotions that people feel when in the presence of an ocean, either because they are travelling in it, seeing it from the shore, swimming in it, surfing its waves, or making a living from it.  The moods and emotions include depth, mystery, danger, flow, peace, immensity, darkness, nurturance, questing, transformation, wonder, and, as Roland Faber points out in The Cosmic Spirit (see below), a sense of the primordial.  Faber speaks of the primordial as transcendent depth and width.

This sense of primordial depth and width is two-sided; it includes a sense of a sense of the fearful and strange, indeed the monstrous, as well as the attractive and fascinating.  We are drawn to the ocean and afraid of it at the same time.  Rudolf Otto called it mystery both tremendous and fascinating.  As Faber puts it:

One can be lost in the open spaces of the sea, drowned by its violent upheavals, miss one’s port of exit, disappear in its endlessness, but also find peace in its calm waters and the infinite horizon that offer us places to linger. The ocean has a presence like nothing else and a depth with an impenetrable life of its own; it hides monsters and treasures. It may be traveled but cannot be drunk. Why are we crossing it? How do we stay alive? Not whether, but when does its own vivacity become too much to bear? The spirit seeker who travels this path will be in awe of the primordial, grand and inconceivable otherness of Reality and its Spirit, a Life so alien and yet so familiar that it reminds us of the sensation and multifold powers of the ocean waters, of their salty strangeness, of their transcendent depth and width, of their patience in carrying us and their seeming indifference swallowing us.

- Faber, The Cosmic Spirit, Cascade Books, 2021

The purpose of this page is to invite reflection on many kinds of ocean spirituality as they are important in their own right and as they are related to God. 

An Ocean Meditation
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by Roland Faber

in The Cosmic Spirit: Awakenings at the Heart of All Religions,
the Earth, and the Multiverse (Cascade Books, Eugene, Oregon, 2021)

Open your eyes and find yourself on a raft—on the open sea

​. . .

It is morning . . .

The sun is just over the calm waters, leaving a trace of glitter bursting toward your raft. . .

Indulge in the reflections of the light—points, circles, lines, interfering, converging, jumping here and there . . 
​
. . . .

The day goes by. Night . . .

 . . .

Dark. Water slapping the raft; wind whispering through the wood, swaying . . .

No stars. No land. No birds . . .

. . .

Another day . . .

No land. No direction. Slapping. Whispering. Swaying . . .

 . . .

Another night . . .

 . . .

No change. Only change . . .

 . . . 

​Don’t think: Where am I? Will I be found? How can I make myself noticeable? I am just a speck on the fast fields of water . . .

Don’t feel: I am thirsty! I am hungry! I am wet! The sun burns! No shade . . .

Detach from yourself. From your place and time! . . .

Fly! . .

. . . .

Look down on your raft in the middle of nowhere . . .

Speed up the sun: sunrise, sundown, day, night . . .

Look down: No change; only change . . .

Blink. Look down . . . 

Where is the raft?  Where am I?...

All sea...

Day and night...waves...traceless...

​Ocean Meditations

by John O'Donohue
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Wild Divinity

THE WORDS ‘SEA’ AND ‘OCEAN’ ARE TOO SMALL TO IMAGE SUCH wild divinity. The ocean is beyond language. The flow of the ocean presents a most beautiful dance. She is eternally restless and delights the eye most with thestructured rhythm of waves. The seashore is a fascinating threshold. With sublime elegance, the ocean approaches and embraces the landscape and each wave has a unique grace and rhythm. The grandeur of ocean movement is consistently enthralling yet there is consolation and consistency in the faithfulness of the ocean. Water stirs something very deep and ancient in the human heart. It satisfies us in a more intimate way than the other elements. Our eyes and hearts follow its rhythm as if the flow of water were the mirror where time becomes obliquely visible. The image of water can hold such longing. The faraway force of the moon that draws the tides to dance is a vivid metaphor for the passionate kinship of the elements that stirs across infinite distance. 

​- John O'Donohue, Beauty: The Divine Embrace

Beauty Charged with Danger
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The ocean often puts on a display of beauty that is charged with danger. When the ocean becomes angry the fury of its charge against the cliffs makes powerful drama. It fills the heart with awe and makes us understand how the ancient Greeks could believe that the ocean was the God Poseidon. To watch the Atlantic pummel into the cliffs at Dun Aonghusa on the Aran Islands is incredibly exciting. Within a wave, tons of water blast into the cliff and rise into the sky in white fury as though some caged force has broken free in the depths and wants revenge on the silence and impassive stillness of the watching island. Yet, even in its wildest passion, the ocean still holds dignity; it builds in every form of wave. The ocean surface is incessantly restless with every conceivable crest and blister of water. Yet the ocean maintains poise. However and wherever it throws itself, it never falls outside of itself. It can spread and scatter every which way, yet it is always held within the shelter of the one rhythm.

Surfing: An Ocean Spirituality Practice
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​Bron Taylor and Others
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​ dedicated to Matthew McDaniel

Surfing into Spirituality: Bron Taylor

​And the spirit of God was moving over the waters (Genesis 1:2.1)
​Bron Taylor in Surfing into Spirituality
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“Soul surfers” consider surfing to be a profoundly meaningful practice that brings physical, psychological, and spiritual benefits. They generally agree on where surfing initially developed, that it assumed a religious character, was suppressed for religious reasons, has been undergoing a revival, and enjoins reverence for and protection of nature. This subset of the global surfing community should be understood as a new religious movement—a globalizing, hybridized, and increasingly influential example of what I call aquatic nature religion. For these individuals, surfing is a religious form in which a specific sensual practice constitutes its sacred center, and the corresponding experiences are constructed in a way that leads to a belief in nature as powerful, transformative, healing, and sacred. I advance this argument by analyzing these experiences, as well as the myths, rites, symbols, terminology, technology, material culture, and ethical mores that are found within surfing subcultures."

​

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​Surfing and Panentheism

​a short reflection for my son, Matthew McDaniel, a surfer

by Jay McDaniel

Pan-en-theism means everything is part of God even though God is more than everything added together. 

​Developed by process theologians in the 20th century, but with precedents in many world religions, it is the view that the whole universe is unfolding within the mind and heart of a single life -- God -- in much the way that a living embryo develops within a womb.  God is a womb-like Consciousness in whose life the universe unfolds, and the oceans and waves on our small planet, along with us, are among the cells in whose Life all things unfold.  

This does not mean that everything that happens on our planet or anywhere else is God's will.  The hills and rivers, the trees and stars, the oceans and the surfer -- all have their integrity and independence; all have power of their own which cannot be overridden by the divine life.  God is all-loving, but not all-powerful; just as a Mother in whose womb an embryo unfolds may well be deeply loving, but not all powerful.  Many tragedies occur that even God cannot prevent.  They affect God even as they affect the world.  God, too, can suffer.  Still, just as a mother has a will, a desire, that her embryo enjoy safety and happiness, so it is with the Life in whom the universe unfolds.  God is Love. God's aim is that we love our neighbors and the whole of life as we love ourselves.

Spirituality is the act of connecting with this Love.  The word "spirituality" means many things, but most deeply it means becoming fully alive in whatever ways are possible, relative to the circumstances at hand, in a loving way, and in consonance with the Life in whose mind the universe unfolds. There are many moods the spiritual alphabet.  Indeed, so we learn from the work of Mary Ann and Frederic Brussat in Spirituality and Practice, there is one and sometimes two for every letter: attention, being present, creativity, connectedness, courage, devotion, enthusiasm, faith, forgiveness, gratitude, hospitality, imagination, justice, listening, meaning, nurturing, openness, peace, play, questing, reverence, silence, transformation, unity, vision, wonder, X (the mystery of life), yearning, and zest for life. 

The practice of surfing can open a person to many of these moods.  It may be part of a new religion, as Bron Taylor suggests, and it may also find its home in a more traditional religion such as Christianity, as the video "Spiritual Surfing" makes clear, as narrated by an Episcopal priest.  Surfing is a trans-religious practice that can be enfolded into many different religions and also practiced by people who are "spiritually interested but not religiously affiliated."  It is a form of meditation and faith.  It is faith that waves will come, even in tough times, filled with fresh possibilities for life and love, no matter what the circumstances.  And it is faith that we can respond to these waves creatively, with skill and effort and a little balance., to help build a world that is good for all, as best we can.

​-- Jay McDaniel