MORE SHEDDING

These days all anyone seems to want to shed is weight. But some things bear more weight on our lives than body pounds.

In Anne Morrow Lindberg's Gift from the Sea , a book I regularly read at the beginning of each new year, the author talks of "shedding." I'm sure I've read the term multiple times, but this year it jumped off the page and right into my psyche!

Gems for shedding from pages 30-35: (Lindberg words in quotes, Paraphrase, mine)
At the beach (or in "retreat' one learns the art of shedding; how much one can get along without.
"...how little one can get along with---not how much." Clothes first---not much needed. What a relief!! (Relief is one of my favorite experiential nouns. DAL)

After the physical shedding of "extra" clothes, shedding of vanity seems a natural occurrence. A shedding of pride ensues.

I will ask into my shell only those friends with whom I can be completely honest. I find I am shedding hypocrisy in human relationships. What a rest that will be! The most exhausting thing in life, I have discovered, is being insincere. That is why so much of social life is exhausting; one is wearing a mask. I have shed my mask. (Lindberg, p. 32)

May these "sheddings" bring a sincere simplicity of life that offers serenity in 2018---for all of us. 

CHOOSE: UNWAVERING IDENTITY

What's your ID?
Mom. Dad. Child, Spouse. Sibling. Friend. Student.
These are standards and many remain unwavering throughout one's life. Sometimes it feels as if we lose our identity as a person and just become one of our labels.

What about in the area of worship? Do we just wear the label of a denomination or religious affiliation. Christian. Jewish. Muslim. Atheist.

Is this the area of one's life where an ambiguous identity is often more visible in certain places, certain days of the week or certain positions at certain times? 

Is is visible on Sundays in a sanctuary or on Saturday in a synagogue but not as recognizable the rest of the week?

Work and worship are not separate identities for believers. Brother Lawrence showed the sacred in washing pots and pans. Even washing dishes became a blessed sacrament for him. (Practicing the Presence of God, p. 12)
Socrates asked (in the prayer from Phaedrus), "May the inward and outward man be at one." (A. Lindberg. Gift from the Sea, p. 23)

The identity that counts is Child of the King. That identity never wavers.
Beloved in Him. An ID of one who lives a life with no separation between spiritual and secular.  Richard Foster calls it, in Freedom of Simplicity, living out of the divine center. (p. 82)

Choose to identify with the LORD and do not waver. It's a lasting identity!

CHOOSE: A REREAD FOR REMINISCING

Folks who know me well, know that I rarely reread a book. I'm more of the "So many Books, So Little Time," philosophy. However, since college days I have read Anne Morrow Lindberg's book, Gift From the Sea multiple times.

This past week I dug it out for another reread, partly because July 6 was the birthday of my dear, dear, friend, college chum and sorority sister, Maureen Kinney. 7/6/1946-1/29/2005. She gave me the book in 1968, almost 50 years ago.

"The shape of one's life is determined by many things, but I want first of all to be at peace with myself.
I want...to "live in grace" as much ...as possible....an inner harmony, essentially spiritual." (p.23)
"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." (p. 24) 

Lindberg goes on to expound on the simplification of life, away from a whole caravan of complications." (p.25) As she wrote of daily demands and balancing acts, her words rang true for me. This is not the life of simplicity* but  rather it is the life of multiplicity which the wise men warn us of.....leading us to fragmentation, which does not bring grace but destroys the soul. (p.26-27) Since Lindberg avers that distraction is inherent in a woman's life, (p.28) this condition runs counter to a creative or contemplative life. She decries the dilemma of "remaining whole in the midst of the distractions of life but continues to seek a balance between solitude and communion and between retreat and return."

All of that wisdom in just the first chapter along with an endearing inscription which reads, One of my favorite books, for one of my "most" favorite people. Love, Maureen.   What a treasure!

BTW, personally, I found that 2 Corinthians 11:3, helps me sip from a cuppa simplici-TEA as I reread this book. The verse helps me not be beguiled by the subtleties of the world so that nothing will lead me astray from the simplicity and devotion to Christ.

Morning Prayer "veloci-TEA"

 O God, you are my God; early will I seek you: my soul thirsts for you, my flesh longs for you.....(Psalm 63:1, KJV)

Velocity can be both good and bad....especially in one's prayer life. Speed and direction in a moment of crisis is just the motion needed. Quickly praying upward. Immediately turning (directionally) to the One who hears. 

Yet, apart from times of urgency, one's prayer times can be so much richer than that, as reading through the Psalms clearly shows. The poetry of the Psalms seems to take on a slower rhythm......a rhythm of the life of the poet or author, from David and Solomon to unknown others. Laments. Praises. Testimony. Confessions. 

Morning prayer times often have me praying slowly.....prayers for others expressed thorough passages from the Psalms. The rhythm of my own life expressed in language from the Psalter. Inhaling the scripture, exhaling the prayers. A breath of God breathed out---His Words, my breath.

Panic prayers, arrow prayers and night-night prayers, are more rapid than those morning ones. Reading through a psalm or other scripture slows me down. No speed reading. In cadence with God's word. Reading and praying. The silences and the sounds.

Holy Spirit, living Breath of God, Breathe new life into my willing soul. Bring the presence of the risen Lord To renew my heart and make me whole. Cause Your Word to come alive in me; ("Holy Spirit, Living Breath of God," lyrics)

A "hurried" velocity in praying doesn't leave room for empty space. 

"A note in music gets its significance from the silences on either side." (Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift From the Sea, p. 115) As in music, empty space is essential in correlating the scripture to the prayer.

A slowing of my morning cuppa mirrors the velocity of my reading and praying, as it takes time to sip and savor both----my English Breakfast Tea and prayers re-directed to Him as I am stimulated from His word. 

SABBATH SNAPSHOT: writabili-TEA

Melanie Benjamin certainly has writability as is shown in her recently published, The Aviator's Wife. This historical fiction is based on the life of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, herself known for writability in her classic, Gift from the Sea.

Benjamin's easy, yet informative read, gives much insight into the once shy daughter of a US ambassador and her very complicated marriage to Charles Lindbergh, once the "darling" of our nation. It tells of that time in our country's history which my parents knew all about. I, not so much----thus my interest in the book.

Well-written. Yes.....but, with it came disclosures of fears and struggles that Mrs. Lindbergh kept from prying eyes. Supposedly she and Charles carefully edited her diaries near the end of his life so.....it probably wasn't the perfect little marriage, which was the public's perception. 

Ms Benjamin says The Aviator's Wife is primarily the story of a deeply intelligent woman. A woman of resilience. A woman who lived in the shadow of her husband.

As historical fiction, apart from the well-known actual people, events and locales presented....all else are used fictitiously by the author. The kidnapping and murder of their 20 month old son, Lindbergh's heroic flight of 1927, infidelity, other children of Charles as later DNA evidence proved, his comments interpreted as anti-semitic during the prelude of WWII, and his 1953 Pulitzer Prize winning, The Spirit of St. Louis are all documented events.

The author includes these facts but then weaves in the emotional aspect of this mystifying marriage in order to tell Anne's story. Fiction and reality blurred, but the story is told from adventures in flying as her husband's only crew to praying as she finally began to write, lingering over words as she searched for imagery.....trying to look at the world through her own goggles, not his.

Words of truth or fiction---as written by the author:

• What do you want to do? Marry a hero. (Lucky Lindy was America's hero.) 
• I would always be looking for that proud glance; that feeling of belonging, of knowing who I was and that I mattered, for the rest of my life. 
• Always the image of the of a child and a birthday cake with one candle....."No Anne. We need to forget." 
• To my children, I was just mom. That was all. And before that, I had been Charles wife, the bereaved mother of a slain child. That was all. 
• He spent much of his time working on some engine or another....not emotions; something he could understand. 
• When he was home, the air in the house was so impenetrable with tension....had to retreat to breathe. 
• Marriage breeds its own special brand of loneliness.

One with writability provides us with a cuppa readabili-TEA---though sometimes we must read with care if we hope to extract God's lessons from a book with the cultural reality of our times!

SABBATH SNAPSHOT: ap-TEA-tude

2/2/14 Aptitude is a defining word for gift. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

certainly showed her ap-TEA-tude for writing in Gift From the Sea. (1955) So much so, that after receiving the book as a gift from dear friend, college chum & Pi Phi sister, Maureen Kinney, I read it every January for over 30 years. After she died, not so much. Reading it nowadays is like a memorial to her and our friendship.

Though not necessarily spiritual, her words offer wisdom that I can view from a godly platform.
Here are some treasured words:

I want to be at peace with myself....I want....to live "in grace"....(p.23)

Art of being alone is a difficult lesson...but once done....incredibly precious. (p. 42)

to be the still axis within the revolving wheel of relationships, obligations, and activities. (p. 51)

World's false values: 

• weighed in quantity, not quality; 
• in speed, not stillness; 
• in words, not in thoughts; 
• in acquisitive, not beauty (p.119)

Gifts Pre-cepts or Signposts toward another way of living: 

• Simplicity....to retain a true awareness of life; 
• Balance of physical, intellectual and spiritual;  
• Work without pressure; 
• Space for significance and beauty; 
• Time for solitude and sharing; ....a life of human relationships. (p.120)

128 pages of Morrow's ap-TEA-tude.