She walked barefoot on the beach, alone, every day, sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the twilight; always with the waves lapping the sand and the skies ever changing.
She would see a fisherman casting away. It reminded her of her husband, gone now after years of fighting an illness. She had grieved and processed and transitioned — all those things you do when you experience loss.
Now, it was just her and the sea — expecting little more than listening, watching, and leaving fresh footprints in the sand each day.
And then, one day, she came upon a woman who was bent over collecting shells. The woman looked up and said, “the ocean gave us a gift today.”
The barefoot woman felt an instant spiritual connection — a calmness, a compassion, a vibrancy, and she wanted to know more, asking, “Why are you collecting so many shells?”
The shell-collecting woman said that she was a pastor in the Northeast who wanted to give each of her parishioners a shell on Palm Sunday when she returned home.
The barefoot woman wanted to hear more of her story.
The shell-collecting woman had attended a catholic school and formed a close relationship with one of the professors who was 20 years older. The professor took a sabbatical for a year to look…
