Sea teaches patience and faith

There are few books that are timeless, speaking to your heart during all of life’s passages. For me, the short list is my Bible and “Gift from the Sea” by Anne Morrow Lindbergh.

This book spoke to me as an adolescent; it sat on my carrel on the fourth floor of the Margaret Clapp Library at Wellesley College where I wrote my thesis; and it is just as meaningful today.

The wife of aviator Charles Lindbergh, the first man to cross the Atlantic in a solo flight in 1927, Anne Morrow Lindbergh raised five children, tragically losing her first son who was kidnapped and murdered in 1932. She was the first woman in America to earn a first-class glider pilot’s license in 1930, and to win the National Geographic Society’s Hubbard Medal in 1934. She also received the National Book Award in 1938 for the novel “Listen! The Wind” about her aviation and exploration adventures.

Published in 1955, “Gift from the Sea” is a personal series of essays that she wrote about her stay at a little cottage near the beach on Captiva Island on Florida’s Gulf Coast.

“The beach is not the place to work, to read, write or think,” she wrote in the first chapter. “Too warm, too damp, too soft for any real mental discipline or sharp flights of spirit. … And then some morning …, the mind wakes, comes to life again. Not in a city sense – no – but beach-wise. It begins to drift, to play, to turn over in gentle careless rolls like those lazy waves on the beach. … The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. To dig for treasures shows not only impatience and greed, but lack of faith. Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach – waiting for a gift from the sea.”

A reporter and editor, I’ve spent much of my life in a newsroom, where I’ve been the first to know about every disaster and misfortune known to man. I remember in surreal detail the Tuesday morning 14 years ago when the terrorists hijacked the plane from Logan and took down the World Trade Center. I wrote a breaking news story that day interviewing a local man who had survived the attack on Pearl Harbor 60 years earlier.

Over the years, I developed a coping mechanism that helps me reconcile my life in the fast lane and all its grittiness. No matter the season, I drive to Fogland Beach. During the forty-minute drive, a shift occurs; and by the time I reach Fogland Road, I have left behind the struggles, sorrows and sufferings of my fellow man, finding sanctuary where peace is as palpable as the fog.

Away from work and home, I have no appointments, no laundry list of things to do, no reason to do anything but just be. In a world this beautiful, there is only sea, space and possibilities.

At the beach, I breathe in the salty air. It is here where Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s voice speaks to me, her prose ringing in my ears in rhythmic cadence to the crashing waves:

“When we start at the center of ourselves, we discover something worthwhile extending toward the periphery of the circle. We find again some of the joy in the now, some of the peace in the here, some of the love in me and thee which go to make up the kingdom of heaven on earth.”

All creatures great and small

When I awoke this morning, I peered through the window and saw movement in the woods behind our house. As my vision cleared, I made out the outlines of two white-tailed deer.

Living in dense woods populated with hundred-foot pines, I am accustomed to coming upon these beautiful and gentle gray-brown animals, but it was a welcome surprise to observe them unannounced outside my bedroom window.

Even in winter, I dwell in a veritable zoo. Twenty wild turkeys congregate in my neighbor’s front yard. A family of geese lines up in single file and takes their time crossing the street, while an impatient driver honks to no avail.

Our bird feeder attracts a menagerie of fine-feathered friends, especially my favorite couple, the bright red Northern cardinal and his buffy-brown mate, who take turns nibbling delicately on the seeds.

We also feed many uninvited guests. A freeloading Eastern gray squirrel hangs upside down from the kennel fence just in reach of the bird seed, while our Jack Russell terrier growls beneath. The squirrel chatters and clucks as he overfills his mouth, puffing out his cheeks.

Finding the feeder empty, the brash blue jays complain.

Even with the constant companionship of these incredible creatures, I catch cabin fever in the middle of February and succumb to the seasonal malady. In deep winter, the house in the forest can feel confining after a glut of short, lackluster days with little sunshine. I start climbing the walls.

“Most of us, I thought, are caged in some way all our lives,” said Gladys Taber in “Country Chronicle.” “There are walls and bars and fences of all kinds, invisible but tangible. We spend a great deal of time climbing over obstacles – perhaps this is what life is all about. But we must all, I think, long for a brief time of real freedom outside the restrictions of our existence.”

Seeking escape, I yearn for open spaces, and I head to our summer place by the sea 40 minutes away. At the beach, the truck navigates over frozen tundra, the stretch of sand interrupted by occasional potholes brimming with icy shards.

The winter sun cannot penetrate the windshield to warm the small cabin, and when the wind whistles, it rocks the vehicle and sends shivers down my spine.

In discomfort with my arms wrapped tightly about me, I gaze at the steel gray seas that lure me away from the rigors of a New England winter and direct my thoughts to the beauty before me. I feel a calming presence as I realize there is so much greater than ourselves at work here.

“Not knowing how to feed the spirit, we try to muffle its demands in distractions,” said Anne Morrow Lindbergh in “Gift from the Sea.” “Instead of stilling the center, the axis of the wheel, we add more centrifugal activities to our lives – which tend to throw us off balance.”

The truck’s heater hums, and I slowly begin to thaw. The warm air circulates, and sitting in silence, I feel warmth radiating from within.

Seagulls stand together on the seashore, buffeting themselves against gale-force winds. The sea pulses with life, teeming beneath the waves.  

The old Anglican hymn by Cecil F. Alexander comes to mind:

“All things bright and beautiful, / All creatures great and small, / All things wise and wonderful, / The Lord God made them all.”