Sea soul blessings

This calling to place pebbles as words on a granite walkway beside the town’s promenade began from a place of hopelessness and overwhelm. It was a conscious decision to act, in spite of that. 

To find a way to pray with the ocean. To craft a daily practice that existed beyond religious structures, rooted in nature, in intuition and flow.

When I began, I didn’t yet understand the depth and power of this simple act of devotion. Or what an impact this would have on me personally.

Today’s post is a loooooong one, I’ve been writing it for days! It feels vulnerable, but hopeful too – probably because it’s about one of the most profound experiences I have had over the past year. One that I really want to share with you.

And that needs a little time.

Can you settle yourself down some time today or over the weekend to receive it? Make yourself a cuppa, and come with me to lay pebbles in prayer by the sea?

Laying pebble prayers – or pebbles in prayer

Most often, I laid out my message in the morning, just after my swim. Still soggy, I would pad along the granite ledge in my dry robe, stretching to warm up.

Sometimes I made the words from heavy rocks thrown up by the sea. Stones sorted by the waves from large to small, carefully balanced, cold and weighty in my hands.

Sometimes from handfuls of shingle, funnelling this through my fingers as I slowly walked backwards, twisting to form the shapes of the letters.

A few times, after the wildest of storms, the seafloor uprooted and thrown at walls, I made the message with freshly turned seaweed that left a sticky residue on my palms.

When a bright abundance of camelias and other blooms were falling regularly to the park floor, I would gather them up in my jumper, to add their bright reds, pinks and whites to the grey and brown stones.

When white feathers appeared, scattered across the beach, I collected them to tuck into the gaps between pebbles.

The message was simple, and repeated each day: “ceasefire now”. Often accompanied by a heart.

It was a wish, a calling out for change. A prayer for an end to suffering.

Gaza was heavy on my mind, due to regular contact with my friend Malak and others there. My heart ached for those suffering in this conflict, and in conflicts elsewhere in the world. I wished for a ceasefire to reach them all.

For an end to the destructive impact of war on the earth. For freedom. For all of us.

The ancient ones, holding it all

As I placed the stones, I would sometimes imagine them each representing an individual life. Someone whose loss or absence was being grieved right now.
 
I would let myself feel all the emotions as they arose. The grief, the anger, the hopelessness and powerlessness, the confusion and the shame.
 
As I let it all flow up and through me, these ‘ancient ones’ – the stones whose weight I felt as such solid reassurance in my hands – received it. They sat with and beside me. Holding whatever needed to be shed, and returning this to the earth. Grounding me when I felt lost.
 
And as the waves continued to return stones from the sea to the same ledge where I laid my pebble prayers each day, I began to find familiar rocks amongst them. The more unusual rocks, the larger or more colourful, those with more distinctive patterns or shapes, returned again and again.

I started to wonder if this had always been the case – the same stones being re-laid on the same beach over and over – and I had only just learnt to look. To start recognising individual stones, and my connection to them.

This new relationship with the stones echoed the wider friendships I was forming far across the ocean.

Through social media, I was communicating with Malak and many others whose stories I had never noticed or touched so deeply before. As their regular messages tumbled me into their lives, like stones tossed into the waves, we shared our hopes and our fears.

Beauty and gifts in abundance

And of course, beside the sea, in the sunshine, in the rain, in the wind, there was always awe and beauty to be found.
 
The twisting flight path of a racing turnstone, or the silhouettes of cormorants drying their wings against the rising sun. A seagull with a silver fish flapping, a piece of seaglass shining green amongst the pebbles, the bright eyes of a bobbing seal looking on.
 
Each sighting, each call to see the wonder all around, guided me into a deeper appreciation of the gifts of my life.
 
Not just the magic and sustenance of a life lived beside the sea – for which I am eternally grateful. But also gratitude for this daily opportunity to feel, to act, to be present.

I felt thankfulness for the expanding connections I was developing. For so many new friends whose world was so different to mine, yet whose hearts beat with the same hope. With the same prayer.

As I opened my heart more fully to the world, a state of oneness was opening to me.
 
I began to sing to the sea as I made the sign. Quietly at first. But as the weeks passed, I grew in confidence, and my songs became a little louder.

Songs of loss, of hope, freedom and a shared love of the sea.

Songs as prayer. As an honouring of the elements. Of each other. Of life itself.

Beauty and gifts in abundance

Laying the stones of these pebble prayers helped me to focus on what lay directly in front of me. On what I could do as one persistent human. And on how I could create hope within myself.
 
This time spent in meditative action by the sea also calmed my nervous system. It rewired my brain, and my body, for greater peace.

Which meant that I could continue to bring my gaze – and the gaze of those who passed this prayer on their morning walk – out to the horizon. To all that was happening in the world beyond. However hard that often was to face.
 
Here, I had many conversations with passers-by about our shared horror and hopes. Sometimes strangers would come and help me build the words. Or add their own stones and prayers when I wasn’t there. Sometimes others created their own sea shrines nearby.

When I went away on holiday with my family, friends and neighbours came to lay the stones in my place. They too felt the peace of the practice. 
 
One tiny action slowly became a community expression of solidarity and love.

A memorial and an honouring of loss. A message of connection.

Pausing in faith

Each day, on completion of this temporary altar offering, I would stop and pause to witness it. I would take a photo to share. And send out my love across the waves.  
 
Sometimes I would stand for just a moment before the other duties of life pulled me away. Sometimes I would sit by the prayer for an hour.
 
Healing, feeling into the increasing sacredness of this space. Being present in love, in my truth. Quietly calling in whatever I needed to keep going.  
 
The sea would always offer me something that helped – even if that something was simply the familiar clack of pebble on granite, pebble on granite, pebble on granite.
 
I would listen with reverence. And offer thanks.

Sometimes, with awe, I would feel into the faith of the families I was now connected to in Gaza. For their faith was strong, even as hope thinned.
 
As one person, I could have little impact on the global situation (despite many collaborative efforts to create change, like my projects with Malak). I couldn’t save their loved ones. Or prevent any of the horrors that they were experiencing.
 
But I could at least offer them my heart, and my prayers – and this solid reminder that they were not forgotten. That we were not looking away.
 
I could offer this proof that my daily choice was to dismantle and rebuild my understanding of the world anew every day. However impossible that also felt at times.

The temporal nature of prayer, even in stone

Sometimes the prayer would remain in place for several days – in the neap tides of mid-moon, beside the calmest of seas.
 
Sometimes waves would wash the stones back into the water within hours. I would imagine these carrying my love and hope across the sea to those suffering elsewhere, also beside the sea.
 
Sometimes I would return and discover that others had changed the words of the message. To something silly like “ceasefire cow” or “chasepipe ow”. Or something more negative like “ceasefire no” “ceasefire non” “ceasefire ow” or simply, “cease”.
 
Sometimes the message had been destroyed completely. On midsummer days, warmed by an indolent sea far too content to reach the ledge, I would still return to find scattered stones, or no remains at all.  
 
I saw a few different people in the act of demolishing this offering over those 48 weeks. People who aren’t often in the water don’t consider the perspective of a swimmer. Their actions may have been hidden from one side by the promenade wall, but I could see them clearly from the sea.
 
One young man kicked the words away as he stomped on through. While others paused to check that no one could see them before they took action.

One was furtive and urgent; another more thoughtful, considering the message for a long time before surreptitiously placing some of the stones in his pocket, and walking to a more distant ledge from which to drop them into the sea.

The sea as healer

Each morning’s altar practice offered me an opportunity to allow and observe what I was feeling. Which was especially useful after witnessing each of these occurrences.

At first, I felt them as a microcosm of the destruction I saw in the world around me. There was anger, disappointment, hopelessness, confusion, frustration, concern, sadness…

And yet, as I paused and connected to the sea, I was able to gently allow any dense emotions, assumptions or judgements to come up and through. Supported by the ocean in my breath, I let them slip through me into the water. Leaving nothing but a salty residue.
 
Eventually, I could return to a place of compassion for all those affected by conflict. To understand that what was prayer to me might be experienced as an attack by another. Though that was never my intention.

We all have a part to play in undoing the violence of fear, and remaking the world, together. A world where all life is sacred.
 
I felt the truth in that on the many times when I returned to find that a broken message had already been mended.

Others had noticed the damage. Others had remade the prayer before me. I was not alone in this hope.

Uncovering oneness

Regardless of whether this stone and seaweed prayer had been destroyed, or changed, or swept away by the waves, our prayer – and the loving intention behind it – had existed. Both solidly and ephemerally, for moments each day. And that was its power.
 
It was never a static prayer – it was a prayer to be taken by the sea. A prayer refreshed and offered, with love, over and over again. A prayer that grew. And connected.

As we rebuilt each day, as we made hope together, as we spoke out, we found each other.

In my most hopeful moments, I dreamt of us each stepping into the beautiful painful gift of truly seeing ourselves in another at this altar. Of deeply recognising and responding to the humanity of each distinct and connected being on this earth.

I imagined a world where – in the making of shared prayers from ancient matter – we could come together. Awaken to our own connection to the land, to Mother Nature, to the sea. We could recognise that we are also stone, sea, the swooping gulls, and each other. That we are one.

An expansion of prayer

As I came to understand the power of this daily action, I also found myself drawn to spending more time at my own Ocean Altar at home. I would pause with a pocket altar when I was travelling – or out offering coaching, EFT or reiki treatments.
 
In these pauses, I could find that same connection that I felt by the sea. And that deeper capacity to be with my emotions.
 
Here, calling in the sea, I could open my heart. And discover more space there in which to hold others. A vast space in which to hold the hopes of more souls than I had ever thought possible.
 
Here, I could be with the grief and the beauty. With the responsibility and the release. I could listen, and feel held by nature, by the ocean, by prayer.
 
I could step into a deeper sense of trust. And that trust allowed me to change. To unlearn, and relearn. To start afresh.

Hope

No action is inconsequential. Nor is any act of prayer – whatever an act of prayer means to you.
 
When each of us lift a pebble, we can change the shape of a whole sea. We can envision a brighter horizon for everyone, including ourselves.

Just last week, my prayer – and the prayers and actions of so many others – received an answer. A ceasefire in Gaza.
 
Whether it will hold or not, we shall see. Already, it has been broken in the West Bank. But still, it offers hope.

It is an answered prayer for so many. It offers a chance for innocent civilians – many of whom have become my friends – to begin to rebuild their lives. Stone by stone, day after day.

After the joy and grief of the ceasefire announcement, I returned to my Ocean Altar. This time, to lay a prayer of hope.

I must of course add a note here in February 2026, to acknowledge that this ceasefire has been broken many many times, in the most heartbreaking of ways. Malak and my friends in Gaza are not free.

We hold hope, and we continue to express that in loving action. But a vision of a hopeful future is still far from accessible for those in Palestine; and for those in Israel and around the world who are also deeply affected by this conflict.

The war in Ukraine continues. As does violence and horror in Sudan, Congo, and so many places around the world – as the grip of billionaires and the pursuit of wealth over humanity becomes ever more visible in the so-called West.

And still we pray. With song. With the sea. We build connection with our hearts here – so that we can witness, and stand up against genocide, oppression, injustice and greed. All around the world, as the veils fall, people are taking action for change – and we are growing. This is hope in action.

Returning to the Ocean Altar

Having now discovered the power and gifts of this simple persistent act, I find myself yearning to return to this Ocean Altar often.

And to honour this simple prayer practice in new ways.

To lay more stones, if and when they are needed. But perhaps more importantly, to spend time daily in ritual, in devotion and witnessing. In song.
 
I come to my Ocean Altar to seek a sacred space in which to listen deeply to my inner knowing, and to the sea’s messages. To call in the precious gifts that I’ve described to you here. To pray.
 
I come to connect and share this sovereign space in which to ground, to release, to focus and to hope. To be held by the sea, by something greater than myself. To access a deeper peace within me.

To find oneness in these times of immense conflict and change.
 
I come to my Ocean Altar, to be renewed. So that I can take clearer conscious action from there.

May our hearts, our hopes and our prayers meet there, across the seas.

May our prayers continue to ripple onwards.

May our actions be a source of hope – for ourselves, and others.