noticing

I am blessed beyond measure to live in Te Tai Tokerau.
It really is one of the most beautiful places i have ever been.

Living here means i can sneak out to the beach as much as i like.  And this last weekend my family and i packed the tent and went to stay here....

It is near Whananaki and the privilege of camping right on the clean ocean with seagulls and pohutukawa as companions, cicadas and waves the sound track to our days and crickets and waves the soundtrack to our nights, is not lost on us.

What can get lost sometimes is the minute.
The tiny.

And that is what i wanted to write about.  

I realised the gift of noticing.

I guess i have always been trained to notice... My Grandma and i used to collect shells together so my eye is honed like a bird of prey to find the shells that are unusual or the old friends.  We used to have a race to find the first cats'eye shell - finding them now is always like a touch from her soft hand.

I took this photo down at my feet, after another camper had walked by and complained about the lack of shells.
I was a bit taken aback.  What was she not seeing?  How could this glorious scattering of colour and form be unpleasing?
I said something about how they were there only small and she huffed something about the last time the shells were bigger and better and went on her way.

For me in that moment the tininess was part of the magic.

That these tiny shells could have made their way past the waves that had knocked me on my arse earlier that morning, to lay glistening in the sand was a tiny miracle.  No longer a home for the shellfish that once lived in them they were set free and washed up.  They may or may not have cared about the fact that i noticed them.  Gloried in them.  Was astounded by their tenacity and design.  

But i did.  It made my world expand to think that even on the days that i am shut in my house beavering away this beauty is out there on the beach.  Maybe unseen but no less worthy or beautiful for it.

My act of noticing them that day enriched my world immensely.  

I began to think about all the things i am blessed by - the tiny miracles i see and feel a sense of wonder at.  How those tiny miracles are there.  Not even waiting to be noticed but just existing for their own time and purpose.  Shells that will, despite their beauty and design eventually decay and become part of the sand.  That the sand exists because of the release and decay of beautiful shells just like this, that it is the accumulation of beauty moving from structure to smaller and smaller particles shows the beauty of cycle and the interconnectedness and the usefulness of all things.

And the wonder that it goes on like that without fanfare seems remarkable.

All  tiny kindnesses, the little girl tucking the hair behind her mother's ear, the driver who lets us in at the intersection, the flutter of the monarch as it floats by looking for food, these too are miracles.  All of it available to us.

Available as deep nourishment for our hungry hearts.

We are so tired many of us.  Hurting, lonely, scared.

And these tiny miracles are waiting for us if we just notice.

And by synchronicity's blessing in the next footstep i found this - not collectable because it is not a whole shell, damaged perhaps in the eyes of some but for me a moment of utter beauty.

Just because i noticed.