Good morning…
As I read these words aloud to our class yesterday, I wished I could whisper them into the ear of the reader struggling with a sense of uselessness, the many strangers who have lost everything in fire or flood, and my sleepless loved ones worrying, “Has our daughter’s cancer returned?” “What authentic work is mine to do?” and “When will Alzheimers free my loved one to heaven?” Written in 1955, nearly sixty-five years later these timeless words still ring true and resonate.
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Excerpt from Gift From The Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Woman must be the pioneer in this turning inward for strength. In a sense she has always been the pioneer. Less able, until last generation, to escape into outward activities, the very limitations of her life forced her to look inward. And from looking inward she gained an inner strength which man in his outward active life did not as often find. But in our recent efforts to emancipate ourselves, to prove ourselves the equal of man, we have, naturally enough perhaps, been drawn into competing with him in his outward activities, to the neglect of our own inner springs. Why have we been seduced into abandoning this timeless inner strength of woman for the temporal outer strength of man? This outer strength of man is essential to the pattern, but even here the reign of purely outer strength and purely outer solutions seems to be waning today. Men too are 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?
…I must try to be alone for part of each year, even a week or a few days, and for part of each day, even for a hour or a few minutes in order to keep my core, my center, my island-quality. Unless I keep my island-quality intact somewhere within me, I will have little to give my husband, my children, my friends or the world at large. Woman must be still as the axis of a wheel in the midst of her activities, she must be the pioneer in achieving this stillness, not only for her own salvation, but for the salvation of family life, of society, perhaps even of our civilization. (50-52)
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Here is the challenge with the kingdom of heaven being within. “Within” is invisible. We are forced to sense, not see. We are asked us to trust, not touch. We are invited to listen for God’s Spirit within us, not languish alone, fearful and fragmented.
Here is the joy of the kingdom of heaven being within. God, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever, plants in our inner soil God’s eternal Spirit. Though our life stages change, human bodies diminish, and the life we have loved is severed, pruned back, the kingdom of God grows strong from within us before expanding out to gradually heal everything.
Jesus said, “How can I describe the Kingdom of God? What story should I use to illustrate it? It is like a mustard seed planted in the ground. It is the smallest of all seeds, but it becomes the largest of all garden plants; it grows long branches, and birds can make nests in its shade” (Mark 4:30-31, NLT).
…Sue…
