|
Gift from the Sea: 50th Anniversary Edition (平装)
by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
| Category:
Teens, Inspirational, Women |
| Market price: ¥ 178.00
MSL price:
¥ 158.00
[ Shop incentives ]
|
| Stock:
Pre-order item, lead time 3-7 weeks upon payment [ COD term does not apply to pre-order items ] |
MSL rating:
 Good for Gifts |
| MSL Pointer Review:
Gift from the Sea - inner harmony and essentially spiritual, it's a eternal journey of a woman seeking living in a "state of inner spiritual grace". A great gift to any woman... and man. |
| If you want us to help you with the right titles you're looking for, or to make reading recommendations based on your needs, please contact our consultants. |
|
| |
AllReviews |
1 Total 1 pages 9 items |
|
|
A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-28 00:00>
After watching The Spirit of St. Louis one afternoon, my boyfriend (who is also a pilot) told me that Anne Morrow Lindbergh had written a book, which, as he was told, "every woman should read." The next time I went to his house, Gift from the Sea was waiting for me.
What amazed me about this book was its timeliness, or should I say, timelessness. That a middle-aged Caucasian woman, writing during the 50's, could strike such a deeply-felt chord of sisterhood with me, a 30-something African-American woman living at the brink of a new millennium, is truly the mark of a gifted writer. We "enlightened, liberated" women of the year 2000 think, with a fair amount of condescension, that we have "progressed" so much from that time period. And yet, the issues Mrs. Lindbergh addressed are still very much with us today: how does a woman fulfill the roles of citizen, artist, wife/partner, mother, career person, friend, sibling/relative, and balance all of that with the time and self-commitment for spiritual/emotional nurturing?
I have a quote from this precious gift posted on the wall at my workstation; it is a state of being I seek as a humble pilgrim on life's journey:
"... I want first of all... to be at peace with myself. I want a singleness of eye, a 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... By grace I mean an inner harmony, essentially spiritual, which can be translated into outward harmony... 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..."
This is a must read for women everywhere!
|
|
|
Gregory Callahan (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-28 00:00>
This title was a recent selection for a book discussion group that I helped organize for my library. As the only male in the group, I felt somewhat compelled to offer token protest to the selection of this classic example of a "woman's book," but actually I was intrigued by it. Everything I had read about "Gift From the Sea" praised its meditative quality and I had to admit that the promise of that rather appealed to me.
I wound up reading the bulk of the book on Mothers' Day, which seemed quite appropriate, given that among the many issues Lindbergh addresses here is the need for mothers to find a balance between their own needs and those of their children and husbands. The need for time to one's self, a "room of one's own", the need for a spriritual dimension to one's existence-well, it seems so obvious that these needs have to be met if a woman--if any human being--is to be fulfilled and to be able to meet her (or his) responsibilities with joy rather than with dread. But the lessons that Anne Morrow Lindbergh taught in 1955 still need to be voiced in 2000 - perhaps more than ever. Lindbergh seems prescient when she speaks of the dangers of the "life of multiplicity" which had already taken root in the immediate post-War era. We know all too well that it has not gotten any better in the past 50 years and that women's lives in particular have become more stressful and, to use Lindbergh's word, "fragmented" in the past half-century.
What distinguishes Lindbergh's book from today's current crop of self-help or New Age sprititual books though is its lyrical quality. Her careful, belletristic prose is soothing and, yes, meditative in and of itself. Reading it seems to bring about the very centeredness and balance that she seeks to describe.
Although she includes no bibliography (and rightly so, as this is not a tract), I would hope that many of her readers would be inspired to seek out the works of some of the writers she quotes in the context of these essays. She does the world a great service in suggesting how Rilke, for example, whose poetry may seem impenetrable at first, can actually speak to the concerns of our own lives.
|
|
|
A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-28 00:00>
Not a book to race through! To be read slowly, alone, savored, re-read, meditated and mused on, with contentment. And if you can't find contentment, it will find you - in Anne's words - her gift from the sea.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh's thoughts are woven around her impressions gathered from her ocean-side stay away from society and civilization -- from people and things - from noise and confusion - from musts and don'ts.
What Anne discovers in her solitude at the beach, she offers to you the reader by way of her journal. The tiny shells she held and studied provide lessons to her and all of us.
Anne's musings about life, relationships, love, busy-ness, aging, simplicity and solitude came to me several years ago at a time I was re-assessing many things in my life. Like a grace, her words soothed me and helped me quiet my turbulent thoughts, and to gather my inmost spirit to bind the wounds, to fill myself with the good already all around me and to go forward.
I realized I could slow down my pace, choose my own path, ask for and expect some peace and quiet and harmony, because these gifts are there for all of us to enhance our lives.
Although written from a woman's perspective, Anne's gift from the sea is for all of us who hunger for the slower pace, the garden path, the sanctity in God's every creation down to the intricate sea shell in Anne's hand as she coddles it, examines its artistic swirls and ridges and colors, and listens to the lessons - the homilies - within its delicate curves.
A keeper of a book. You'll go back to this one, like to a favorite vacation hideaway or armchair by the fireside or corner in the garden under the stars. It'll be an old friend, a comfort and blessing.
Take a deep breath...Can you just smell the salty tang of those soft breezes off the ocean?
|
|
|
Orrin Judd (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-28 00:00>
Based on its reputation as one of the seminal works of Feminism and a callow belief that the author was merely riding her husband's coattails to fame, this is a book that I have pretty studiously avoided. As it turns out, that was a colossal mistake on my part. This little book contains more interesting and compelling thoughts on the nature of human relationships, particularly the marriage relationship, than just about any other book I've ever read.
It's not possible to address them all here, but here are two ideas that I found particularly striking. Here is a passage describing a quality marriage:
A good relationship has a pattern like a dance, and is built on some of the same rules. The partners do not need to hold on tightly, because they move confidently in the same pattern, intricate but gay and swift and free, like a country dance of Mozart's. To touch heavily would be to arrest the pattern and freeze the movement, to check the endlessly changing beauty of its unfolding. There is no place here for the possessive clutch, the clinging arm, the heavy hand, only the barest touch is assign. Now arm in arm, now face to face, now back to back - it does not matter which. Because they know they are partners moving to the same rhythm, creating a pattern together, and being invisibly nourished by it. The joy of such a pattern is not only the joy of creation or the joy of participation, it is also the joy of living in the moment. Lightness of touch and living in the moment are intertwined.
When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity - in freedom, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern.
The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now. Relationships must be like islands, one must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits - islands, surrounded and interrupted by the sea, and continually visited and abandoned by the tides.
This image, of a loving couple as partners in a dance, not gripped in a hammer lock, but tracing a unified pattern via different steps, just seems profound to me. We all know people who demand of love that it be unchanging, or demand of a partner that they do things in lockstep; these people are never happy and we immediately recognize their relationships as unhealthy. At the same time, we recognize the good marriages around us as the ones where each partner is confident enough in the other to have faith that their separate paths will remain intertwined and will lead to the same place.
The other section that truly brought about a personal epiphany, was when she says:
...marriage, which is always spoken of as a bond, becomes actually, in this stage, many bonds, many strands, of different texture and strength, making up a web that is taut and firm. The web is fashioned of love. Yes, but many kinds of love: romantic love first, then a slow-growing devotion and, playing through these, a constantly rippling companionship. It is made of loyalties, and interdependencies, and shared experiences. It is woven of memories of meetings and conflicts; of triumphs and disappointments. It is a web of communication, a common language, and the acceptance of lack of language, too; a knowledge of likes and dislikes, of habits and reactions, both physical and mental. It is a web of instincts and intuitions, and known and unknown exchanges. The web of marriage is made by propinquity, in the day to day living side by side, looking outward and working outward in the same direction.
As I read that, I was reminded of some of the marriages I've never been able to fathom, from my own grandparents to that most analyzed relationship of our day, the Clintons. The notion of the years together creating a web and of reaching a point where you, the couple, are within, looking out in the same direction, seems to me to go a long way to explaining such marriages. Think of how completely the Clintons are entangled within their own unique web, how insular their world must be, and, so long as they do work in the same direction, their relationship at least starts to make a little sense.
There is much more here besides. I approached with trepidation, fearing a chick book, and found instead a marvelous exploration of the human condition in general and of the extraordinarily complex nature of marriage in particular. It is a book that anyone will benefit by, especially actual or prospective husbands and wives.
|
|
|
A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-28 00:00>
I had no idea, when I found this book in a little beach bookstore recently, that it was written in 1955. Had I known, it probably would have dissuaded me from buying it. I now know how fortunate I am to have not known!
I believe that books, words and people come into our lives at the time they are most needed, and Gift from the Sea certainly fits that bill for me. While small bits of it may be dated, most of it speaks as clearly and truly to modern day woman as it would have to 1950s women. In fact, with so many women in search of their most authentic self these days, it may even be MORE relevant to today's woman! It is a delicate and thoughtful essay on solitude, couplehood, inner peace and the wonder of nature. I can't imagine anyone not being inspired and uplifted by reading it. Truly, a gift for the soul.
|
|
|
Cassie Condrey (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-28 00:00>
Gift From the Sea is the kind of book that makes you want to leave your life for a couple of days and find the existance that Anne Lindbergh seemed to be living in when she wrote it. When I began reading it (by accident), I felt that she must have found some secret passage into my own soul and put its meaning into words I could never even dream of thinking. Her approach is incredible- because it seems as if she took no approach. She just sat down and wrote what seemed to pour uncontrollably from her own soul. She is heroic in her honest, simple view of life and its possibilities. It is a book I advise every woman to read at every stage of her life to remind her of the opportunity she has as as woman- to not only be equal to the opposite sex, but to also delve deep within herself to be what she was created to be. |
|
|
Renee (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-28 00:00>
For anyone - but most particularly any woman - in search of self and her place in the world this book, written in 1955, is a must read. It so fully articulates the inner struggles so many women today try to come to grips with - while at the same time it illustrates that as much as we would like to believe that much of what occurs in our lives is a new occurence, the fact is that there truly is nothing new under the sun, that these struggles just persist from generation to generation.
This diary is so timely throughout that it is at times almost spooky. Hear Lindbergh, for example, conjure up images of the impact of today's Martha Stewart at a time when Martha Stewart was just 14 years old and still a very long way from Lindbergh's consciousness or that of the general public:
"Here I live in a bare sea-shell cottage. No heat, no telephone, sweeping and clearning here. I am no longer aware of the dust no plumbing to speak of, no hot water, a two-burner oil stove, no gadgets to go wrong. No rugs. There were some, but I rolled them up the first day; it is easier to sweep the sand off a bare floor. But I find I don't bustle about with unnecessary sweeping and cleaning here. I have shed my Puritan conscience about absolute tidiness and cleanliness. Is it possible that, too, is a material burden? No curtains. I do not need them for privacy; the pines around my house are enough protection. I want the windows open all the time and I don't want to worry about rain. I begin to shed my Martha-like anxiety about many things. Washable slipcovers, faded and old - I hardly see them; I don't worry about the impression they make on other people. I am shedding pride. As little furniture as possible; I shall not need much. I shall ask into my shell only those friends with whom I can be completely honest."
And listen to her speak directly to women of both the 20th and 21st (and probably the 22nd) centuries when she writes:
"With a new awareness, both painful and humorous, I begin to understand why the saints were rarely married women. I am convinced it has nothing inherently to do, as I once supposed, with chastity or children. It has to do primarily with distractions. The bearing, rearing, feeding and educating of children; the running of a house with its thousand details; human relationships with their myriad pulls -- woman's normal occupations in counter to creative life, or contemplative life, or saintly life. The problem is not merely one of Woman and Career, Woman and the Home, Woman and Independence. It is more basically: how to remain whole in the midst of the distractions of life; how to remain balance, no matter what centrifugal forces tend to pull one off center; how to remain strong, no matter what shocks come in at the periphery and tend to crack the hub of the wheel"
I can barely in a few quotes pay this book the respect it deserves. Suffice it to say that I highly recommend this book. In fact, I suspect it is going to be my goal in 2002 to put it in the hands of many friends, family members and acquaintances!
|
|
|
A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-28 00:00>
I picked up Anne Morrow Lindbergh's Gift From the Sea with a good deal of trepidation. The Oprahfication of America has too often brought the sexes into warring opposition. So much so that when men or women write about what it means to be men and women, they can't seem to resist taking backhanded swipes at the value of one another. At the time, I did not know that Gift From the Sea was so old... I figured it would be the same stuff we see too much of today rehashed in pleasant warm-fuzzy, faux spiritual fashion to fit the market. I stand corrected.
Mrs. Lindbergh shows herself to be an author of deep insight, intellectual honesty and true caring. As she reflected on each shell she found on the beach and related them to life not only as a woman (although it is a central theme) but as a human in our modern times (it still fits--even fifty years later), I was swept up into her thoughts and dazzled by her soul.
Lindbergh finds much worth in what we are when all the noise of our surroundings is stripped away. She seeks to cling to this essence and bring it to bear as she reenters to tempest of everyday life. I can relate to this.
"Gift From the Sea" reminds me forcefully of what David said in the seventeenth Psalm. He cries out to the one who has made him. He asks that God keep him as the apple of his eye - to allow him to seek shelter in shadow of his wings. This is a cry for protection but also for a wholeness we all lack, whatever the age we live in. I believe Morrow Lindbergh's words echo this. David concludes with these words:
"And I - in righteousness I will see your face; when I awake, I will be satisfied with seeing your likeness" (v. 15).
May we all! I recommend this book.
|
|
|
Jackie St Hilaire (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-28 00:00>
The inner life of Anne Morrow Lindbergh is lived out on these pages. Having lost her first child to kidnapping and murder, it must have been very difficult for her to find a purpose to start over and bear other children. One reads between the lines and realizes that only in going deep within in solitude can one's soul be healed. One must give herself/himself time and not rush into busyness, looking for new relationships, new books to read, movies to see, or hiding your emotions, you have to play the whole thing out or you will perish. There are many situations we have to die to, to lose control of, and not try to possess. We have to detach ourselves, not by becoming indifferent but compassionate. Only then will we find peace of mind and soul. Anthony De Mello in his book: Sadhanna: Way to God also explores with us the joy that comes from detaching ourselves from any preconceived endings. To let go and let others become who they were meant to become not what we want for them to become. John S. Dunne is his book: Reasons of the Heart: A Journey into Solitude and Back Again into the Human Circle is one of the best books I have read and re-read on solitude. I will be giving a copy of Gift from the Sea to my 3 grown daughters for Christmas. It is my hope that it will give them support to live out their lives in the grace of the moment.
|
|
|
|
1 Total 1 pages 9 items |
|
|
|
|
|
|
