Beauty has a way of reaching inside of us…

I was out on the water, the sky was incredible…

Took a video while the beauty took my breath away…

Check it out!

(If you cannot see the video, click here)

(c) Joe Noonan

Don’t you get tired of strategizing, of lining everything up and figuring it out?

Its how we’ve been taught; make a plan and stick to it! Check off the steps one, two three… (four, five, five hundred!)

Success is defined in a thousand books about how how how…

B-ooooring!

Its a LOT more fun to just show up!

Of course it helps to have an idea of where you want to go, but…

Doesn’t your heart already have that? I mean really, do you have to contemplate what you, in your heart, really want to do?

(Yes, that was a trick question)

I love just showing up… I’m doing it more and more in my life, and it ROCKS!

This, another fish story, is a prime example…

(If you cannot see the video, click here)

I was swimming with these two dolphins who kept ‘high fiving’ each other…. I laughed thru my snorkel!

It was so cool to see… they were slapping their pectoral fins back and forth like a couple of kids… the joy of their play was contagious!

I got it all on film… check it out and let me know if it leaves YOU smiling too!!!

(If you cannot see the video, click here)

The ocean can be a scary place… I used to have nightmares of sinking in it as a kid. Its BIG and DEEP and full of weird stuff including SHARKS!!!

(Scared yet? ;)

The ocean is also a place of fathomless beauty and wonder… a place we go to to be baptized and reborn.

A few weeks ago I taught half this group how to snorkel. Some were strong swimmers, some didn’t know how to swim, and some were scared of the ocean. It was the beginning of a five day dolphin trip that Jen and I were leading. Day one is ‘get friendly with the water’ day, and its one of my favorite.

These brave adventurers brought their brand new masks, snorkels and fins into the water. After showing them how to adjust and wear them, they each got coached in putting their face into the water and breathing thru their snorkel. Not an easy feat! Putting your face IN the water and inhaling is counter-intuitive. It takes a bit of practice and a lot of trust.

Then, once everyone’s floating comfortably face down on the surface, I taught them each how to to do a surface dive.

Yup, virgin first-time beginner snorkelers learning how to freedive – it was awesome to behold how their excitement lead them thru their fear.

The whole thing took less than two hours… Like learning to ride a bike, now they have a skill for life! I get so inspired watching people overcome their fears, I’m often moved to tears. (I’m sure it was the salt water… ;)

Twenty years ago, I taught my former mother-in-law how to snorkel… she was scared but was curious to see what we were so interested in. I remember getting her to float on the surface of the ocean and keeping her face in the water… it took a few minutes, but then she got the hang of it…

Then the magic ensued…

She stopped thinking about the snorkel and began to notice the fish life at her feet… Watching her from a few feet away, I could feel the shift… she began swimming slowly along the shoreline, following the nooks and crannies of the rocks, and for the next fifteen minutes, didn’t lift her head out of the water once…

And when she did, she was radiant! The same radiance I saw on these friend’s faces – the beautiful innocent look of wonder…

I’ve seen this happen so many times; once people get a glimpse of life under the sea, they become enraptured.

The very next day, our group of first time snorkelers were swimming and playing off the back of a boat in forty feet of crystal clear blue water with the wild dolphins; they were ecstatic!

Take on something new; it will open your horizons.

And we swam with the dolphins!

My March trip to Bimini was magical in so many ways… I’m still integrating it, catching up to the expansion I experienced on so many levels.

One amazing thing that happened is I got to jump in the water and swim with a sailfish… it was brief and exhilarating! Sailfish are a very streamline, graceful and fast moving fish that live in the open ocean. They shimmer in amazing colors and move like a bullet.

I’d spent the earlier part of the day spearfishing from my kayak, (another story) and ran into my friends Kevin and Kandy on their way out of the canal in their boat. They were taking Chris and Noah out to the reef. They invited me along and, ever ready for more adventure, I climbed aboard.

We hadn’t gone far before we spotted two bottlenose dolphins feeding in the sandy bottom in 20 feet of water. As we circled around, I hurriedly started putting my wetsuit and snorkel gear back on. Just then Kevin spotted something on the surface….

“Marlin!” he yelled, and all our eyes scanned the water to find a deep blue sail riffling the surface. He swung the boat around again and I put on my mask…

Bimini is famous for its ‘big game’ sport fishing, something I’ve never done because it involves hours and hours of trolling lures in deep water for the elusive sailfish, tuna and marlin; pretty boring stuff to me when I can don my mask and fins and slip into the ocean itself. But the mystery and allure of marlin and sailfish has its pull…

All the billfish sport a long spear for a nose; they rush into the middle of a school of smaller fish and thrash their bill around, wrecking havoc. Then they circle back around and eat up any fish too wounded from their charge to escape.

All this flashed through my mind as I stood on the rail of the boat, ready to jump in. I’d just read an article the day before in Spearfishing Magazine of someone who’d speared a sailfish, and how his buddy almost got skewered in the belly. (He fended it off and only got speared in the hand – big consolation). I picked up my pole spear for self defense, ready to jump in with it, but put it back down.

Kevin swung the boat around, putting the sailfish within 25 feet. “Now” he said, and I jumped in…

Wow, its been two weeks since I posted anything…

My apologies! I’ve a commitment to sharing beauty with you. There’s something magical that happens when I talk or write or video about what I love… it starts as an instant replay, (which is in itself pretty cool) then it goes from reliving a memory to actually being there, actually living it…

I get to live it again as I share with you…

I spent two weeks in Bimini, the Bahamas, with my sweetie Jen and The Greenbergs and the Benedicts and the ocean and dolphins and hammerheads and a sailfish… THAT’S why I haven’t written…. I, like Jonah, was swallowed whole…

And, like Will Ferrell in “Land of the Lost”, I came out the other end intact! (and smelling quie a bit rosier)

The photos and videos will follow… in the interim, I love and appreciate being on this adventure with you!

Namaste!

Joe

(If you cannot see the video, click here)

The fresher, the better…

The closer to the source, the more vitality, the more enzymes, vitamins, etc…

Straight from the tree is as good as it gets!!! Hence this inspiration…

I was in Bimini, helping my friend Kevin put a roof atop his new bungalow… there was a coconut tree right above my head, with some fresh ripe juicy coconuts… inspiration struck!