If you know me well, you know I love reading. I usually have an hour or two each night dedicated to reading on my Kindle, and usually read one or two inexpensive Kindle books a week. Sometimes they are awful and I have to return them. Sometimes I love them and spend countless other hours rereading them.
However, it is summer. Which means long walks to Evans Library with my special book bag. I live for summertime reading (and Christ). It means I can spend countless hours poured over our library database, snooping through shelves on the fourth and sixth floor as I hum The Times They Are A-Changin'. It also means I can borrow whatever books I want, like ones about how to collect butterflies. I have complete justification over my free book choices. I just finished Gift from the Sea last night. It is Anne Morrow Lindbergh's meditations of a life characterized by solitude, love, and rest. She had spent a week or two at the beach alone, looking at seashells and writing about the finer points of life. I thought thought this was very prettily done: "It is true, of course, the original relationship is very beautiful. Its self-enclosed perfection wears the freshness of a spring morning. Forgetting about the summer to come, one often feels one would like to prolong the spring of early love, when two people stand as individuals, without past or future, facing each other. One resents any change, even though one knows that transformation is natural and a part of the process of life and its evolution. Like its parallel into physical passion, the early ecstatic stage of a relationship cannot continue always at the same pitch of intensity. It moves to another phase of growth which one should not dread, but welcome as one welcomes summer after spring. But there is also a dead weight accumulation, a coating of false values, habits, and burdens which blights life. It is this smothering coat that needs constantly to be stripped off, in life as well as relationships." Reminds me of Bob Dylan's famous words: And admit that the waters Around you have grown And accept it that soon You'll be drenched to the bone And if your breath to you is worth saving Then you better start swimming or you'll sink like a stone For the times they are a-changing. Times a-change. Relationships change. We're to expect that. There is no reason for us to expect sameness, but we can expect response. Even during my harvesting and dry seasons (or my ebbs and flows, to retain her nautical lingo), the important thing is to remember that maturity and growth happens with time, in the heat. We cannot expect our friendships or relationships with one another to remain consistent. We would be denying ourselves of who we are: people who mature with time. I like to read books like Gift from the Sea because it requires a response. I can think of a couple relationships that I have that I have been responding to wrongly. I need to shed the smothering coat of my expectations and respond in love. As Paul urges the Philippians, "Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others" (Phil. 2:3-4). Do you need to shed some false ideas or expectations about someone or about life? Do you need to reevaluate how you view that friend or circumstance? Do you need to start swimming? I think I do. Postscript: Anne Morrow Lindbergh is an interesting woman. She was married to Charles Lindbergh, the famous aviator, and her first child, Charles A. Lindbergh Jr. was kidnapped and killed in 1932. I knew about the Lindbergh family since I was a child, but I didn't know who she was until I was finished with her book. I think it is quite a success to write a sweet little book like Gift from the Sea with such a difficult past. She is worth reading about. Thank you, Mom, for teaching me about sensational stories like the Lindbergh family, and for letting me read Murder on the Orient Express as a kid (Agatha Christie based part of Orient Express on her son's death). I couldn't read Twilight, but I sure could read And Then There Were None! I am blowing kisses to you. I don't know why The Times They Are A-Changin' is my library anthem. It just is. However, I do think everyone needs to listen to Bob Dylan. I even kindly added him into my blog post so you can love him as much as I do. Listen to Don't Think Twice, It's Alright and Blowin' in the Wind, to name two classics.
2 Comments
Brandon Kerns
10/20/2017 01:27:48 pm
Let's see if I can put my thoughts into words. Often so difficult, except when propelled by the rare stroke of insights. This is not one of those times. First I love Anne speaking here on the next phase of relationships. "It moves to another phase of growth which one should not dread, but welcome as one welcomes summer after spring". It is true to me that we enjoy to prolong the spring of early love in relationships. The newness, passionate, ecstatic etc. parts of the "new" relationship. Yet, this is only temporary happiness. Though exciting, it is rejecting the humaness of humans. The inevitable change that is to come. As you say "the important thing is to remember that maturity and growth happens with time, in the heat". In the heat... Reminds me of The Lord saying we are tried in fire, yet the perseverance brings hope. Which brings praise, honor and glory when Christ is revealed. Anyways... My point is Anne's point. We should not dread the summer. We should embrace it. Furthermore, not just see the summer, heat or fire as something that brings pain or unwanted change. But a change that awakens us from a blissful temporary happiness to deep found joy. Joy that is rooted and grounded in something so much more real, and steady than a singular moment of fresh spring air.
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Brandon Kerns
10/20/2017 01:29:09 pm
and don't get me started on Dylan...
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