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| “This is what one thirsts for, I realize, after the smallness of the
day, of work, of details, of intimacy -- even of communication, one thirsts for the magnitude and universality of a night full of stars [or jack - o - lanterns], pouring into one like a fresh tide.” Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906 – 2001) Gift from the Sea (1955) |
As I mentioned earlier this month on my Fortnightly blog post, I have long been a fan of Anne Morrow Lindbergh but had neglected to appreciate the continued timeliness of Gift from the Sea, first published in 1955. In 1975, a 20th Anniversary Edition includes her expression of surprise and gratitude at the book's ongoing popularity:
"The original astonishment remains, never quite dimmed over the years, that a book of essays, written to work out my own problems, should have spoken to so many other women."If she was astonished then, perhaps she'd be astounded now; for the relevance of her work has continued well into the 21st Century. In 2005, along came the 50th Anniversary Edition [with a new introduction by her daughter Reeve], which even now, another sixteen years down the road, offers wisdom entirely applicable to life on our planet, post - 9 / 11 and midst - COVID. Her concerns from five decades ago are so contemporary, they could have been expressed this very year.
In 1955 -- before the internet, before cell phones -- she wrote:
“Today a kind of planetal point of view has burst upon mankind. The world is rumbling and erupting in ever-widening circles around us. The tensions, conflicts and sufferings even in the outermost circle touch us all, reverberate in all of us. We cannot avoid these vibrations.In 2021 -- feminist minister Nadia Bolz - Weber expresses a similar dilemma in her essay, "If you can't take in anymore, there's a reason: it's all too much"!
But just how far can we implement this planetal awareness? We are asked today to feel compassionately for everyone in the world; to digest intellectually all the information spread out in public print; and to implement in action every ethical impulse aroused by our hearts and minds. The interrelatedness of the world links us constantly with more people than our hearts can hold. Or rather — for I believe the heart is infinite — modern communication loads us with more problems than the human frame can carry. It is good, I think, for our hearts, our minds, our imaginations to be stretched, but body, nerve, endurance and life-span are not as elastic. My life cannot implement in action the demands of all the people to whom my heart responds. I cannot marry all of them, or bear them all as children, or care for them all as I would my parents in illness or old age. Our grandmothers, and even—with some scrambling—our mothers, lived in a circle small enough to let them implement in action most of the impulses of their hearts and minds. We were brought up in a tradition that has now become impossible, for we have extended our circle throughout space and time.
Faced with this dilemma what can we do? How can we adjust our planetal awareness to our Puritan conscience? We are forced to make some compromise. Because we cannot deal with the many as individuals, we sometimes try to simplify the many into an abstraction called the mass. Because we cannot deal with the complexity of the present, we often over-ride it and live in a simplified dream of the future. Because we cannot solve our own problems right here at home, we talk about problems out there in the world. An escape process goes on from the intolerable burden we have placed upon ourselves. But can one really feel deeply for an abstraction called the mass? Can one make the future a substitute for the present? And what guarantee have we that the future will be any better if we neglect the present? Can one solve world problems when one is unable to solve one’s own? Where have we arrived in this process? Have we been successful, working at the periphery of the circle and not at the center?” (124 - 26)
"I used to live in a very old apartment building with super sketchy electrical wiring. Were I to audaciously assume my hair drier could run while my stereo was on, I would once again find myself opening the grey metal fuse box next to the refrigerator and flipping the breaker. My apartment had been built at a time when there were no electric hair driers, and the system shut down when modernity asked too much of it.
"I think of that fuse box often these days, because friends, I just do not think our psyches were developed to hold, feel and respond to everything coming at them right now; every tragedy, injustice, sorrow and natural disaster happening to every human across the entire planet, in real time every minute of every day. The human heart and spirit were developed to be able to hold, feel and respond to any tragedy, injustice, sorrow or natural disaster that was happening IN OUR VILLAGE.
"So my emotional circuit breaker keeps overloading because the hardware was built for an older time.
And yet, when I check social media it feels like there are voices saying “if you aren’t talking about, doing something about, performatively posting about ___(fill in the blank)___then you are an irredeemably callous, priviledged, bigot who IS PART OF THE PROBLEM” and when I am someone who does actually care about human suffering and injustice (someone who feels every picture I see, and story I read) it leaves me feeling like absolute shit. I am left with wondering: am I doing enough, sacrificing enough, giving enough, saying enough about all the horrible things right now to think of myself as a good person and subsequently silence the accusing voice in my head? No. The answer is always no. No I am not. Nor could I. Because no matter what I do the goal of “enough” is just as far as when I started.
And yet doing nothing is hardly the answer.
So I wanted to share something with you. Every day of my life I ask myself three discernment questions I learned from one of my teachers, Suzanne Stabile:
What’s MINE to do, and what’s NOT mine to do?
What’s MINE to say and what’s NOT mine to say?
And the third one is harder:
What’s MINE to care about and what’s NOT mine to care about?
To be clear – that is not to say that it is not worthy to be cared about by SOMEONE, only that my effectiveness in the world cannot extend to every worthy to be cared about event and situation. It’s not an issue of values, it’s an issue of MATH."
Writing 66 years apart, Anne Morrow Lindbergh and Nadia Bolz-Weber draw the same conclusion: however infinite we might like our hearts to be, our resources are limited. We must use our energy wisely, stay focused, and use our wits to solve the problems at hand. Without a sure focus . . .
"a singleness of eye . . . that will enable [us] to carry out these obligations," we will spill away "in driblets . . . seldom being allowed the time, the quiet, the peace, to let the pitcher fill up to the brim. . . . With our pitchers, we attempt sometimes to water a field, not a garden" (Gift from the Sea, 23 45, 52)When it comes to staying focused on the time and task at hand -- the garden, not necessarily the entire field, Pastor Nadia says it so well:
"Because actual reality is also the only place where actual joy is to be found. If joy is delayed until a preferred future comes about, we set ourselves up for despair. But if there is hope in THIS day. Joy in THIS reality. This life. This body. This heart, then certainly we can prevail."
this earlier, water-color edition . . .
