Moonshell

Excerpt from Gift From the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1955)

The answer is not in the feverish pursuit of centrifical activities which only lead to fragmentation. Women's life ( life in general) is tending more and more toward the state William James describes so well in the German word, "Zerrissenheit - torn-to-pieces-hood." She cannot live perpetually in "Zerrissenheit." She will be shattered into a thousand pieces. On the contrary, she must consciously encourage those pursuits which oppose the centrifical forces of today. Quiet time alone, contemplation, prayer, music, a centering line of thought or reading, of study or work. It can be physical or intellectual or artistic, any creative life proceeding from oneself. It may not be an enormous project or a great work. But it should be something of one's own...what matters is that one be for a time inwardly attentive.

Solitude, says the moon shell (she is holding in her hand). Center-down, say the Quaker saints. To the possession of the self the way is inward, says Plotinus. The cell of self-knowledge is the stall in which the pilgrim must be reborn, says St. Catherine of Siena. Voices from the past. In fact, these are the pursuits and virtues of the past. But done in another way today because done consciously, aware, with eyes open. Not done as before, as part of the pattern of time. Not done because everyone else was doing them. Revolutionary, in fact, because almost every trend and pressure, every voice from the outside is against this new way of inward living...

Why have we been seduced into abandoning this timeless inner strength of woman for the temporal outer strength of man? This outer strength in man is essential to the pattern, but even here the reign of purely outer strength and purely outward solutions seems to be waning today. Men, too, are being forced to look inward - to find inner solutions as well as outer ones. Perhaps this change marks a new stage of maturity for modern, extrovert, activist, materialistic Western man. Can it be that he is beginning to realize that the kingdom of heaven is within?