The ocean is my wisest teacher. Stand before her and feel your chest stretched open by those wild blue fingers. She will teach you how to breathe. Breathe in, as her waves crash into the sand. Breathe out, as they slip shly back to sea. Each day she hosts lessons in the art of paying attention, for anyone who will show up. See those bud-green anemones, clinging to the rock at low tide? Do you see the knotted kelp, washed ashore, how it has come alive again with jumping bugs? Walk barefoot for our next lesson: careful, those fish bones are sharp. Watch your step, the snails beneath are breathing too. The shell, the clam, the sandpiper’s prints in the sand: These are offerings. They are inscribed with invisible ink. These marine messengers seem to say, “remember: you are here, and so I am. You are a part of us, and we are a part of you.”
On a barefoot walk in California’s Garrapata State Park, I noticed the sand to be particularly dense with shells. Sifting through the sand with my fingers, I became numbingly aware of how much life coalesced to create what I was standing on. Thousands of abalone had strengthened their tiny pink bodies by eating algae, grown large, and passed on. Coral and clam shells had endured years of crashing into stone and crumbling into tiny pieces. Their outer shells tumbling inland to make the ground beneath my feet. Sometimes the beach itself is a burial ground: shells, split and cracked, old homes of living organisms that melted into the sea floor. This type of destruction is exquisite and natural. But there is another type of brokenness troubling our oceans一 that is, a broken relationship. Us humans have neglected, abused, and stolen too much from our great oceanic love. Our seas are suffering from an illness, a heartbreak, a broken relationship with her people. She is fighting off the illness of inconsideration. Of course, in the process, we are breaking our own hearts too. The hate we unleash on the sea has no choice but to return to us. As we hurt her, she hurts us. But the opposite is just as true: as we heal the sea, she heals us in response. Love her, and she will love you back. Admire her, and in her sea-spray-language she will speak, saying “you are enough.” Sit next to her, and she will hold your hand. She’ll tell you your hands are holy. She’ll move you to tears with a perfectly timed dorsal fin: a distant whale in motion. She’ll show you how to stop time. Step one: watch how the otter floats. Step two: Be like him.
The sea is salty, and so are we: our tears, our sweat, our blood. More than half of the oxygen we depend on comes from the sea, thanks to an abundance of photosynthetic phytoplankton. Artists, storytellers, and sailors are drawn to the ocean, enthralled by her ability to soothe, shock, and sustain. Kneeling into a tidepool, you will find a myriad of awe-inspiring creatures. The longer you stay, the more you will see. Whimsical nudibranchs will snap you out of any anxious inner-tangents. Sea stars will astonish you with their resilience. If you’re lucky, and quiet enough, tiny shrimp will crawl out of rocky crevices. These are things you can touch, hold onto, and eventually, let go of. Tangible treasures of time. They are real, and textured, and tether me to the earth. Sinking into stillness, we can feel that the sea and spirit are intertwined. We are water and life, emerging and decaying. The ocean holds us in her embrace, breaking us apart in order to make us new. A sanctuary of vast, undeniable presence. Immersed, enlivened, entrusted. This is a resurrection. The ocean itself is a prayer, and we are a part of it.