"The sea does not reward those who are too anxious,
too greedy, or too impatient. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as
a beach – waiting for a gift from the sea".
Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

I have spent the last several days on beaches. Some were filled with retired folks walking leisurely with seemingly not a care in the world. On others college students played volleyball and Frisbee, full of the exuberance of spring break in a warm climate.Peppered among these people were families with young children building sand castles and trying to outrun the waves as they rolled onto shore. And there were plenty of us who fell in between all these descriptions.

The common bond of all these people? Shells. All along the beaches people of varying ages and stages of life periodically bent over and retrieved from the sand this treasure….a sea shell. What is the amazing appeal of these fragile things? Is it the tiny, unique and intricate beauty of each one? Is it that they were once home to something alive? Is it that they somehow connect us with the sea, that place from which humans most likely emerged to walk the Earth? No matter one’s view of the genesis of Creation, all humans came into the world through the water that held us…our mother’s womb . Our first home was water and the majority of our body is made up of water. So it only seems right that we should walk the sand and recover these little containers of life that was once held in the vastness of water.

At each beach, I started out telling myself that I will only pick up the ‘very unusual one’. But before I know it there I am, pockets full, hands full, no more room….until the next walk. On this outing the only thing missing was the occasional addition of the shell that one of my sons knew I couldn’t live without. Off on their own adventures now, I missed their contributions to my obsession.

At baptism we often use shells to remind us of the vast bodies of water that nurture us, nourish us, connect us,cleanse us, give us life. This Earth on which we travel is mostly water, a shell of sorts on which we ride, tucked into its curves and crannies, we listen for the whoosh of its water within our ears, within our heart.  We grow and outgrow, abandon our shell homes and take on new ones. Yet this Earth home remains constant,true. Perhaps that is what draws us to these jewels we find when the tides deliver them at our feet. Bending down, we reach out and pick up and we remember. Young ones new to this earth tuck an oyster shell in a pocket and remember. Those full of the promise of what is yet to be press a scallop shell into the hand of another young one and remember. Reaching down and saving a conch shell from being drawn back into the tide, those who have walked the beach many years, remember.

And so it goes……………..on and on and on.