I said goodbye to the beach. I have a ritual when I leave the beach. Usually we try to leave somewhat early; it’s a few hours drive home. So the last morning is a quick, early walk; one last feeling of the sand under my feet and a walk through the water.

Before I go up to finish packing, I stand on the beach and look out at the vastness of the ocean. It was beginning to storm on our last morning. The ocean was rougher, lots of waves starting rather far out before emptying their power on the sand. I talk out loud to the sea. I say thank you for the peace and healing I have experienced. I feel so grateful to be able to stand on the edge of the land in all the beauty and power and grace of the ocean. I tell the ocean I will return, soon . . . but this time, I felt I wasn’t leaving the ocean behind. I felt it as part of me.

In his poem Interrelationship, Thich Nhat Hanh says:

You are me, and I am you.
Isn’t it obvious that we “inter-are”?

That’s how I felt with the sky, the sand, the ocean . . . I was all of it, it wasn’t separate from me, I have it in me, always. I am one with all of it.

I still feel that energy and power and being-ness moving through me. The ebb and flow of the waves and tide mirror my ebb and flow of thoughts, emotions, feelings. The peacefulness I experience while I am at the ocean’s edge, feeling the groundedness of the sand, is still with me. I’m not longing for it. That happy place is not outside of me; I carry it with me. I feel it, I remember it, it flows through me still.

It’s just like that with Grace, with Love. We are that. We are always part of the flow. All of us and everything makes up the flow of Grace and Love. We might forget it, and mistakenly believe or feel we are separate. We might identify with the ebb. But when we even briefly or temporarily remember the truth of our being, in that instant, the awareness of the flow returns, as it always will. And once again, the saving grace of Love reminds us we are the Love we seek. Already, right now, in this moment.