Lessons From an Underwater Monastery

“IF YOU LEAVE this earth before me, I’m becoming a monk,” I once told my husband, staring over the impossibly high-cliffed walls of Greece’s Meteora monasteries.

- SARAH BOWEN

Each day, the ocean brought a new lesson. Join (REV) SARAH BOWEN for an immersive interspecies retreat in the natural world. Details at sacredsendoffs.com/events.

Luckily, Sean has became accustomed to my many declarations after sacred-space crashing. And so, when I recently exclaimed, “How do you feel about selling our house and moving to an underwater monastery?” he responded, “Hmmm … tell me more.”

I grinned, standing dripping wet with snorkel in hand, staring out at the islands of the Galápagos. “Our monastery’s walls will be volcanic rock faces and coral reefs. Our prayer time will require snorkels and our sacred songs will be comprised of bubbles rising from our finned feet. Each day we will enter the silence of the natural world, aloneish among an awe-inspiring 450 species of fish. Passing sea lions and penguins will offer thought-provoking, wordless homilies.”

I think I’ve almost convinced him to take vows. Yet, when explaining my vision to another person on the scuba expedition, I received a blank stare. The Galápagos archipelago is known for science rather than spirituality. Throughout our trip, I heard Charles Darwin’s name uttered as often as Jesus’s name is invoked in a Christian church or Lord Rama’s is during kirtan.

Lamentably, Darwin is best remembered for “survival of the fittest,” a phrase that he didn’t even coin, and an overly reductionist synopsis of his hefty book On the Origin of Species. Even more regrettably, Darwin’s discoveries came from lifeless specimens he took home for study. And his Glutton Club membership meant he ate many along the voyage.