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Title: Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh ISBN: 0-679-73241-1 Publisher: Pantheon Books Pub. Date: 30 January, 1991 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $8.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.88 (42 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Self-help without the jargon
Comment: 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.
Rating: 5
Summary: So few pages, so many gems
Comment: "I begin to understand why the saints were rarely married women," Anne Morrow Lindbergh writes. "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 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."
Using the illustration of shells from the sea, Anne Morrow Lindbergh clears away the clutter of life, pares it down to its most simple form, that of an internal life that lends clarity to the externals. Each section of the book is a different shell, and a different lesson learned. Peace within one's self, simplicity, clarity, joy, the validity of each cycle and era of a lifetime, strength, and wholeness are just some of the lessons she imparts.
In about 50 years things have not become any less complicated, and this short, simple little book is even more relevant to our busy and noisy modern lives. The lesson one takes away from the book is not how to get rid of all the things, but how to find a calm, still center within one's self to maintain sanity, and that need never change, no matter what the distractions might be.
Rating: 5
Summary: The perfect gift for Moms
Comment: Even though this book was written in the 1950's, it's subject matter is as current and relevant as if it was written yesterday. This is a small, sensible, gem of a book on the often overwhelming and thankless task of being a wife and mother. No, it's not a feminist rant, just a realistic look at what it means to sacrifice yourself for others. This book would make the perfect gift for every mother with young children...trust me.
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Title: Wisdom from Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh ISBN: 0880885432 Publisher: Peter Pauper Press Pub. Date: February, 2002 List Price(USD): $5.95 |
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Title: Return to the Sea : Reflections on Anne Morrow Lindbergh's "Gift from the Sea" by Anne M. Johnson ISBN: 1880913240 Publisher: Inner Ocean/Innisfree Press Pub. Date: 09 January, 2004 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: Dearly Beloved by Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Joan Anderson ISBN: 1556524900 Publisher: Chicago Review Press Pub. Date: 01 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Bring Me a Unicorn: Diaries and Letters of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1922-1928 by Anne Morrow Lindbergh ISBN: 0156141647 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: March, 1993 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: A Year by the Sea: Thoughts of an Unfinished Woman by Joan Anderson ISBN: 0767905938 Publisher: Broadway Books Pub. Date: 15 August, 2000 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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