Serendipity

We have been in a frenzy over here preparing for Thanksgiving, hosting Thanksgiving, and storing 3 gravy boats from Thanksgiving.  It was an amazing day and I may do it again someday.  Nobody got food poisoning, so that increases our chances.

While we were turning the office into a dining room, I had to go through piles of papers, books, and detritus.

I found an old dog-eared copy of Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh.  Married to an alleged Nazi sympathizer, first born kidnapped and murdered and yet out of that pain came such a beautiful and elegantly written gift to women.  Following on the heels of Thomas Merton's The Seven Storey Mountain, it was a welcome balm:

     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 primarily to do 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 general run counter to creative life.......It is more basically:  how to remain whole in the midst of the distractions of life; how to remain balanced, 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 need to revisit some of her wisdom as I enter the holiday Tsunami season.  My hub is not cracked but it seems to be veering off the road on occasion.

Of all the books to reappear, this one is truly serendipitous.  As my darling children scream and throw socks at each other, in an inescapable game they play daily called "Stinky Feet", I give a silent prayer of thanks for the wise women who carved out enough time to pass on their wisdom.