The other day a friend stopped me in the parking lot and told me her 9-year-old son asked, “Mom, is there really such a thing as sea glass?” And my friend replied “Why yes there is, because Marylea just posted a picture of some on her Facebook.”
I had to laugh remembering the first time I picked up a piece of sea glass. I was about 10-years-old and we were camping at a beach somewhere along the west coast. We spent our days collecting seashells and polished rocks and chasing the water as it pulled back from the shore, only to run from the waves that surely followed. (The six of us must have stowed away a boat-load of shells that year, our own personal treasures.) We presented each piece for my mother’s inspection, waiting for her oohs and ahs for our unique finds. I had found a pretty piece of green sea glass – I still remember its shape, looking a bit like Utah with softer edges. I thought it was a rock but my mother said no, that is sea glass. She said it with a bit of amazement and that might explain why I was so amazed myself. I pondered for hours how the sea makes glass.
Okay, maybe I was 8.
And now, as Spring turns into summer my annual longing for the sea begins, as does my fascination with and love of sea glass. Typically, I just admire it in pictures or pick up a bag at Pottery Barn and give it as a gift with one of my favorite summer time books, “Gift from the Sea” by Anne Morrow Lindbergh. It is a memoir of a summer she spent at the sea (We don’t really call it a sea here in California. It’s an ocean. A rather large, crashing and oddly less destructive force than our east coast counterpart. But “the sea” sounds so much more romantic and soothing, doesn’t it?). Mrs. Lindbergh (yes, that is the wife of aviator Charles Lindbergh.) writes short meditations about shells, assigning one to each chapter. It is beautifully written. One of my favorite quotes from the book is “Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach—waiting for a gift from the sea.”
So lying “…empty, open, choiceless…” I googled sea glass and found the perfect beach to harvest my treasures from. And harvest I did, a handful of beautiful little gems from the sea. Made of ordinary, broken pieces of discarded glass, tossed about, water smoothing the edges, wind-blown sand polishing and providing a finishing touch of perfection.
May is the month that reminds me each year to return to the sea. It calls to me. It has a gift for me – little pieces of nothing transformed by the sea.
I like to imagine too, in this month of May, Mary standing there at the shore, under her title Star of the Sea, smoothing out our rough edges, polishing us and presenting us, these little pieces of nothing, to her Son, for Him to ooh and ah over His gifts from the sea.
“Always stay close to His heavenly Mother, because she is the sea to be crossed to reach the shores of eternal splendor.” ~ St. Padre Pio of Pietrelcina.
I leave you too with a prayer to Mary Star of the Sea.
Blessed weekend everyone. And happy May!
Stella Maris’ Prayer
O Mary, Star of the Sea, light of every ocean, guide seafarers across all dark and stormy seas that they may reach the haven of peace and light prepared in Him who calmed the sea.
As we set forth upon the oceans of the world and cross the deserts of our time, show us, O Mary, the fruit of your womb, for without your Son we are lost.
Pray that we will never fail on life’s journey, that in heart and mind, in word and deed, in days of turmoil and in days of calm, we will always look to Christ and say, “Who is this that even wind and sea obey him?”
Our Lady Star of the Sea, Pray for us. Amen
