Shore Lines: Reflections Beside the Wide Water

Shore Lines can help you restore meaning and gain perspective. Mari Messer is a sea lover, who takes annual seaside retreats to collect shells, watch people and animals, and fill notebooks with images, musings, and reflections. The result of her sojourns is a book in the tradition of Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s Gift from the Sea. Shore Lines presents the sea as a guide to life, helping readers become more focused and grounded as they view their lives through Messer’s lyrical lens.

With Shore Lines, Messer inspires readers to "explore your own inner sea-space. To some, taking time for reflection may seem like selfish indulgence. . . . But perhaps now more than ever, we need such a respite, a chance to restore balance and clarity. . . . We need to go apart when there’s danger we may come apart. If you can’t get to the sea, I urge you to sit beside a fountain in a park, or seek out a river, a lake, even a puddle for your reflection. Or simply come along on an imaginal sojourn beside the sea as you read these pages."

Dip into Shore Lines to discover:

• The power of the night stars appearing at twilight over the sea.

• The meaning of a bouquet of gull feathers.

• How to learn from sea cows and have "a friendship for no advantage."

• The retreating tide has a pallet that "accepts our old work and leaves a smooth new beach to entice us to begin again."

Shore Lines is a vacation retreat by the sea that anyone can take any time of the year.