The way the ocean speaks

And the messages it sends

Last night we walked, hand-in-hand, along the sea shore. The soles of our bare feet kissing the cool sand. The sun had already set, and it was dark but for the headlights illuminating the fog as cars glided down the windy hillside. On the horizon a constellation of fishing boat lights bobbed up and down with the tide. Our children’s voices, a chorus of giggles and shrieks, filled the air as they ran in circles around us being chased by uncles and aunts and grandparents.

We whispered our deep gratitude for this scene as it unfolded, remembering how magical it felt to run and laugh in the dark, long after bedtime, when we were once children ourselves.

Earlier in the day we had taken a hike up the hillside and through the coastal trees dripping in moss and lichen. Just as we’d entered the forest I’d looked up, noticing a butterfly, then another and then suddenly we realized there were hundreds flying above us between the canopy of trees and hanging in clusters on branches. We stopped and stared in awe as the monarchs glided through the air, their delicate wings lighting up in bright colors as they passed between us and the sun.

Today we walked out across the sand and into the ocean, hand-in-hand again, Omi naked in our arms. The waves swelling, curling and crashing around us. Birds gliding and diving, searching for fish. A loan seal joined us for a moment. The cool of the breeze, the warmth of the sun, the sting of the salt water, our laughter between it all.

There is this moment after the crescendo of the wave, when all is still and you can hear the sparkling and fizzing sound of the foam as it blankets the surface of the water. Peace and stillness between the ebb and flow. It only lasts a moment. Anticipation builds as another wave gathers, peaks and rolls into itself with a rhythm only found in nature.

And this is it, I think. To become aware and present enough to notice these moments between the crescendos in life. To live in and of these moments. To look up long enough to see the butterflies gather, to pause long enough to hear the magic in our children’s laughter, to experience the essence of these sparkling moments. To surrender to a rhythm that’s never consistent, but always unfolding, wave after wave, whether practice presence or not.

A moment by the ocean. Shot by the ever talented Zoë.

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Hello sweet friends!

I’ve been writing this very first newsletter in my mind for the past few days and I feel so grateful to be sending it out to such a sweet group of friends.

As many of you know, this adventure came about after I began reading How to Break up with Your Phone by Catherine Price, followed by several nudges from the universe (one among them being Ruthie Lindsey’s newsletter), which ultimately inspired me to take a break from social media. It has been one full week since logging off and, in all honestly, I only wish I’d done it sooner.

The final two lines of Laura Lynne Jackson’s book, Signs: The Secret Language of the Universe, feel like a near perfect summation of what this last week has felt like:

When we are mindful, we will see things we haven’t been able to see before. And once we see them, we will never be able to unsee them—nor would we ever want to.

We, Ché and I, (he’s joining me in the whole business of breaking up with our phones) are making our way through the thirty days of exercises in the book, which has sparked many interesting conversations between us and has us both thinking deeply about what we want to spend our time doing, creating and experiencing.

I’m sure I’ll share more on this in the future, but for now I send my love and gratitude and I hope you find a few moments of stillness in the days ahead.

All my love,
Raina

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1. The fact that in just one week my average time spent on my phone each day went from 6 hours to less than 1.5 hours. This realization has felt simultaneously embarrassing, enlightening and empowering. Ché and I keep wondering what we were doing with all that time on our phones… It’s very telling that we can’t remember.

2. How to not simply “fill the time”, but instead use the new found spaciousness in our days to reset our expectations for ourselves and our lives, to notice our bodies, our breath, the thoughts in our minds, the way the light shifts through our home hour by hour… perhaps I’ll pick up my mandolin for the first time in five years…

3. A question that’s surfacing in my mind more often than I’d like: “Am I doing this right?” (“this” being any number of things including, but not limited to; parenting, healing, being creative, writing a newsletter, breathing, relaxing, noticing, living) And of course there is no real answer for the question itself is flawed. “Right” is relative and based in the assumption that there is only one “right” way to do the thing in question. But it feels good to say it out loud. And sometimes that’s all it takes to release the tension. Letting the thought dissipate in the space outside the mind. Perhaps the question transformed could be: “Why am I doing this?” For it is in the deeper intention that we often find the joy of it.
   

1. Gifts from earth, via Ché: A one inch sand-dollar and a feather from a Long-billed Curlew, or Numenius, which means “of the new moon,” and describes the slender, curved shape of the bird’s bill.

   

2. Watching a Seagull as it watches the slender curved shape of the moon rise into the Tuesday night sky. Little synchronicities, nature reflected in itself:

   

3. This song:

   It reminds me of that feeling of standing in the ocean tide and that moment of stillness between the crashing waves. Does it take you there too?