Talking Tuesday: Gift from the Sea

A dear friend gave me this slim volume as a birthday present last year.  I've been reading it in fits and starts--a page here and there, mostly.  I really like it, and the format is such that you can dip into it a little at a time.  I wanted to excerpt a passage that stood out to me a while back.  In it, Anne examines her life at that moment--one characterized by a home, a husband and five children, her writing career, her art, and the ways that all those things were woven together in a rather untidy manner.  I felt I could have written this myself.

"But I want first of all--in fact, as an end to these other desires--to be at peace with myself. I want a singleness of eye, purity of intention, a central core to my life that will enable me to carry out these obligations and activities as well as I can. I want, in fact--to borrow from the language of the saints--to live " in grace" as much of the time as possible. I am not using this term in a strictly theological sense. By grace I mean an inner harmony, essentially spiritual, which can be translated into outward harmony. I am seeking perhaps what Socrates asked for in the prayer from Phaedrus when he said, "May the outward and inward man be at one." I would like to achieve a state of inner spiritual grace from which I could function and give as I was meant to in the eye of God. 

Vague as this definition may be, I believe most people are aware of periods in their lives when they seem to be "in grace" and other periods when they seem to feel "out of grace," even though they may use different words to describe these states. In the first happy condition, one seems to carry all one's tasks before one lightly, as if borne along on a great tide; and in the opposite state, one can hardly tie a shoe-string. It is true that a large part of life consists in learning a technique of tying the shoe-string, whether one is in grace or not. But there are techniques of living too; there are even techniques in search of grace. And techniques can be cultivated. I have learned by some experience, by many examples and by the writings of countless others before me, also occupied in the search, that certain environments, certain modes of life, certain rules of conduct are more conducive to inner and outer harmony than others. There are, in fact, certain roads one may follow. Simplification of life is one of them."

~Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea, "Channeled Whelks", pp 17-18, New York: Pantheon Books, 2003 edition.