Matterofprayer: A Year of Everyday Prayers – Friday, March 24, 2017
Solitude, Seen by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
I know very little about Anne Morrow Lindbergh, other than the fact she was married to Charles Lindbergh (first person to make the solo transatlantic flight in May 1927). I was unexpectedly moved by the excerpt from her writing A Gift from the Sea, a meditation on marriage. She wrote this while in complete solitude for a month, on an island on the Atlantic shore. [1]
Her primary interest and topic—judging from this short excerpt—seems to be marriage and relationship. However, solitude as a spiritual discipline weaves in and out of her writing.
“A good relationship has a pattern like a dance and is built on some of the same rules….First touch, intimate touch of the personal and particular (the chores in the kitchen, the talk by the fire); then the loss of intimacy in the great stream of the impersonal and abstract (the silent beach, the bowl of stars overhead).” [2]
As Morrow Lindbergh describes the on-again, off-again nature of closeness, I see her repeated reference to the ebb and flow of the tide. “Is there not a clue to the problem of relationships as a whole? Is there not here even a hint of an understanding and an acceptance of the wingèd life of relationships, of their eternal ebb and flow, of their inevitable intermitteency?” [3]
As someone who has been in a long-term relationship myself, I can see how this “inevitable intermittency” can be an actuality for many. Solitude for a whole month might appeal more to my husband than to me, yet I can see places and rhythms where solitude has some definite attraction.
Interesting that this reading suggests that I examine my relationship with my husband. (and, similar to others, who might be led to take a closer look at their own significant relationships) Dear God, thank You for this different kind of internal viewing and questioning, where I am not only examining myself and my internal Self, but I am also led to examine my marriage and close relationship. Help me to take an honest and gentle assessment. Dear Lord, in Your mercy, hear my prayers.
[1] Spiritual Classics, edited by Richard J. Foster and Emilie Griffin. (San Francisco, California: HarperSanFrancisco, 2000), 141.
[2] Ibid, 142.
[3] Ibid, 143.
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