A Gift From a New Friend is a Gift from the Sea.....

"I began these pages for myself, in order to think out my own particular pattern of living, my own individual balance of life, work and human relationships.  And since I think best with a pencil in my hand, I started naturally to write.  I had the feeling, when the thoughts first clarified on paper, that my experience was very different from other people's,  (Are we all under this illusion?) My situation had, in certain ways, more freedom than that of most people, and in certain other ways, much less."

                                    Anne Morrow Lindbergh, foreward from "Gift from the Sea"

So AML would be very pleased.  A book she began as a personal journal...has transcended time and 55 years later connects women together from all over the world.  Her opening words in a "Gift from the Sea" really resonated with me as they remind me of the reason I started my blog.  Like Anne, who started her book as a personal journal, I started my blog as my personal creative outlet.

What I didn't expect was that it would connect me with others who share the same life passions that I do.  What a wonderful thing this has been for me.....to meet such terrific people.

Recently, I learned about Karen from The Essential Beachcomber... actually through another blog - Shellbelle's Tiki Hut where Rhonda wrote a great post titled "The Other Shellebelle" who as it turns out was Karen.  I loved the post, joined Karen's blog and from there... we hit it off.  In learning more about Karen from her blog, I realized that we have much in common, especially our love of beach combing and shelling.  Karen did two posts in particular that I just loved and commented on.  The first one - was about her collecting shark's teeth that wash up on shore...and the second one was a fabulous post on "The Gift from the Sea".

I had never read this book - although being a seashell fanatic and a fan of Sanibel & Captiva Island....I knew it was a classic. Next thing I know - Karen offers to send me a copy as she had an extra one.  Of course, I accepted and when it arrived...I was so touched to receive an added surprise.....

Karen included a lovely label of a little girl on the beach pouring beautiful seashells out of her sand pail...which says It is the sweet, simple things of live which are the real ones after all.  

And my added surprise.....shark's teeth that had washed up on shore....

How nice was this?  She remembered I was intrigued by her shark teeth post - and sent me some along with the book.  What made it even more special - was that she is currently working on filling a jar - which takes some time - and she gave me some of these teeth instead of adding them to her jar.  I am still thinking about how I'm going to display these teeth in my home decor.  They are very cool, it's hard to imagine they were teeth...since they are very smooth and closely resemble tiger eyes.

So Karen's favorite chapter is Channelled Whelk.  Here is an excerpt that I selected:

"I mean to lead a simple life, to choose a simple shell I can carry easily - like a hermit crab.  But I do not.  I find that my frame of life does not foster simplicity.  My husband and five children must make their way in the world.  The life I have chosen as wife and mother entrains a whole caravan of complications. It involves a house in the suburbs and either household drudgery or household help which wavers between scarcity and non-existence for most of us.  It involves food and shelter; meals, planning, marketing, bills and making the ends meet in a thousand ways.  It involves not only the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker but countless other experts to keep my modern house with its modern "simplifications" (electricity, plumbing, refrigerator, gas-stove, oil-burner, dish-washer, radios, car and numerous other labor-saving devices) functioning properly.  It involves health; doctors, dentists, appointments, medicine, cod-liver oil, vitamins, trips to the drugstore.  It involves education, spiritual, intellectual, physical; schools, school conferences, car-pools, extra trips for basketball, or orchestra practice, tutoring, camps, camp equipment and transportation."

"Simplification of outward life is not enough.  It is merely the outside. But I am starting with the outside.  I am looking at the outside of a shell, the outside of my life - the shell. The complete answer is not to be found on the outside, in an outward mode of living.  This is only a technique, a road to grace. The final answer, I know, is always inside. But the outside can give a clue, can help one to find the inside answer.  One is free, like the hermit crab, to change one's shell".

It's amazing to think these words 

were written in 1955.

Thanks Anne - for connecting so many of us who otherwise would not have met - that is your true Gift from the Sea.