Gifts from the Sea

The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its nets of wonder forever.

Jacques Cousteau

Between Sea and Shore 

(I know I've posted this image before but it fits the post best!)

http://lianne-schneider.artistwebsites.com/featured/between-sea-and-shore-lianne-schneider.html

Some days, my longing for the sea is palpable. Today is one of them...a gray, rainy day, the first of several this week...and I can think of nothing I'd rather be doing than walking along the beach at Cape Cod or Cape May, or Rehobeth, La Jolla, even Galveston before the summer crowds descend. The ocean in all its many moods and guises has always been a metaphor for my life's journey and there are times only those hours alone on a quiet beach can help me to decipher the lessons along the way. Some years ago I picked up a stone on the shore at Race Point, one of those diamond days - so perfect you could never forget it, shared as it was with my dearest friend. I've kept the stone for all these years and carry it with me to remind me of all the sea has to tell me.

  

THE WORRY STONE

I carry it in my pocket,

roll it around there letting

it shift from palm to fingers,

trace its contours with my thumb

and remember the day I

picked it up at the beach,

that brilliantly sunny

afternoon at Race Point…

how it caught my eye

amidst all the other pebbles

because it was not yet

perfectly smooth, though

quite well-polished, different

in hue and composition

from an ordinary stone,

a worn conglomerate

of sparkling quartz and

dull gray limestone,

one  black clast of obsidian

distorting the smoothness.

My thumb catches the fragment,

worries it, like one worries

a broken tooth with the tongue,

feeling the irregularity there,

probing it with questions -

what long journey has this stone

made to find itself on this shore?

How was it shaped by that voyage,

battered, abraded and pounded,

its rough edges worn down,

by long ages of pressure,

the travel across distant seas

cementing together all

the disparate metals and minerals,

compressed now into one

remarkable and unique stone.

I carry it with me in my pocket

and worry it with my thumb

to remind me of my own

uniqueness, melded from all

the separate pieces of self,

light and dark, rough edges

scoured by the unrelenting rhythm

of life’s ocean into a new whole

that is finally becoming me. 

Perhaps I'll get back to the sea this summer - but even if I don't, it's always in my heart, always reminding me that some things are eternal, that there is an ebb and flow to life that one must learn to accept. But like the tide...what seems gone will return...and find me waiting. 

The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/sea.html#284FQUeFS7VdxVWD.99

The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/sea.html#284FQUeFS7VdxVWD.99

Sea Story...a longing

"We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea,

whether it is to sail or to watch,

we are going back from whence we came." 

~John Kennedy~

 

Between Sea and Shore

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/between-sea-and-shore-lianne-schneider.html

 

I've never lived by the sea really - close a few times - able to get to a beach on a day's drive,
but the sea fascinates me. Its power, its moods, its vastness...are somehow an endless source of inspiration to me in both my writing and my art. I think of an ocean in a storm and I'm reminded of the storms that life can bring to us. I see a lighthouse and I know that there is somewhere -
in a friend's heart, a lover's touch a light to guide me through. I think of the journey each of us is on...our own personal quest for peace, for truth, for wholeness...the journey of self-discovery -and it takes me to the sea.  

 

BETWEEN SEA AND SHORE

A late summer afternoon at the Cape,
sweet sounds abound - a gentle lullaby
of sea grasses sighing in an onshore breeze,
the slight swell of an incoming wavelet
spilling happily over ageless small stones,
little pebbles tumbling one over the other,
their gentle clattering friction masked by
the resonance of the surge as it splashes
into this quiet cove onto this shingled beach.
Wading out, I let the wave embrace my feet,
hearing against my legs the slight swash
of an ebbing tide and listen in my silence for
the softest shushing of a withdrawing wave
whispering its secrets to the sand, softly
planting goodbye kisses, wet and sloppy,
on a curved shoreline of shimmering stones.
What peace it is to stand here and be witness
to this eternal love between sea and shore.  

                                    © Lianne Schneider 2013         

 

          

Wild and free

"In the beginning and the end, human beings are creatures of the wild"

Sam Keen - Fire in the Belly

 Sanctuary

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/sanctuary-lianne-schneider.html

It’s probably only logical and appropriate that this list of heroic virtues end with the virtue of wildness. Sam Keen makes the case that we are over-domesticated – probably over urbanized and at the mercy of increasingly complex technology, too, I’d add. Many of my literary heroes – Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman – wrote compellingly of the human need to be in touch with nature, to experience our own “wildness” and to escape the paralyzing conformity of contemporary society. That was 150 years ago and yet, Thoreau’s advice is more important than ever. “We need the tonic of wildness...At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and un-explorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, un-surveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.” [Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods]

How many of us have in defending some resistance to formal religion at times, exclaimed, “But I experience the Divine best in nature?” Today, the virtue of wildness, the ideal and idea of wilderness are more important than ever for human beings to maintain our balance, find some outer peace to match the inner peace we strive for, and to preserve that legacy for future generations.

Rather than go on at length about my own feelings about the need for wildness and for preserving the wilderness, I am going to share the introduction to a free pdf essay by TinaMarie Ekker. I’ll provide the link for you to read it in its entirety if you wish at the end of this introductory passage.

 

The Idea of Wilderness

“Wilderness is Relationship. All cultures across history set places apart from the routines and common behaviors of daily life. The purpose of these special places is to reorient our focus and perceptions in a setting that is conducive to reflection. We approach such places differently than we do the usual places in our daily lives, and it is the restraint in this interaction that makes them special, enabling us to experience the unique values these places provide in nurturing the human spirit. Examples include shrines, memorials, and ceremonial sites. Wilderness also is such a place.

 

Like all special places set apart, Wilderness is not just a geographic location, it is an idea and an ideal. The “idea” of wilderness encompasses certain values that we as a society have chosen to protect. Congress enacted the Wilderness Act in 1964, with the singular statutory purpose of securing the benefits of an enduring resource of wilderness:

          

            It is hereby declared to be the policy of the Congress to secure for the American people

of present and future generations the benefits of an enduring resource of wilderness. For

this purpose there is hereby established a National Wilderness Preservation System.

            (emphasis added) (The Wilderness Act, Sec. 2(a))

The Wilderness Act intended that Wilderness would have meaning, that it would be protected for something, not simply be a place where certain activities, such as logging, do not occur. Although Wilderness may look similar to other undeveloped landscapes such as national park back-country, it is the way that humans interact with Wilderness that makes it different from other landscapes.

In preserving Wilderness we are essentially preserving an endangered experience, and an endangered idea — the idea that self-willed landscape has value and should exist. Wilderness offers the opportunity to experience a relationship between humans and nature that is increasingly rare in our modern world, a relationship in which humans do not dominate, manipulate, or control nature but instead immerse ourselves as a member in the larger community of life. 

What makes this possible is the authenticity of Wilderness. This authenticity offers us a window into a world other than the world humans have constructed and now dominate. It is the authenticity of Wilderness that gives it deep meaning, imbuing it with immense intrinsic value as part of the ancient fabric of the earth. 

What keeps Wilderness ‘real’ and alive in our world today is the attitude with which we approach and interact with these Congressionally designated landscapes. In this way, ‘Wilderness’ is not just physical geography, it is also a concept that must be protected and preserved if Wilderness - not just undeveloped landscape - is to continue to exist for future generations to experience and enjoy.” 

To read the rest of this exceptional essay on the value of wilderness (it’s well worth the time), please go to http://www.nuibooks.com/the-idea-of-wilderness-PDF-35225619.html 

 

As artists and writers we can make such a marvelous contribution to this virtue in our work…perhaps that is our great gift - that we are privileged to capture and preserve this ideal in paintings, photographs, stories and poems.