Beatrice Marovich writes about “jellyfish time” in Religious Dispatches:
Jellyfish don’t really move so much as they just float. The water moves, and it rouses them into action; their gelatinous bodies rise and their tentacles fall like ribbons after a strong wind. Jellyfish are never in a hurry; they don’t run up stairs, or push their way onto a crowded train. Jellyfish change the way I experience time; when my thoughts slow down, I’m suddenly awake to the world in a different way. There are animals in this world who light up dark water with their bodies, with their green fluorescent protein! My mind gropes for a better word than “magic,” but it’s the only word that keeps surfacing.
This sounds, I realize, deeply unscientific. You will allow me this indulgence, perhaps, because I am a scholar who studies theology—theories of divinity. I traffic in ideas that hover uncomfortably close to magic….
She then relates Nathaniel Rich’s recent New York Times article on Japanese researcher Shin Kubota. Kubota research focuses on jellyfish which seem do reverse the aging process. Marovich reflects on the story in great detail, considering the pursuit of immortality, as well as whether or not “The revelation of the jellyfish’s secret is contingent upon our moral transformation.”