Madame Lindbergh(PART 1 OF 3)
Subj:
I'm glad to see you
at Joe Fortes Library.
From: barclay1720@aol.com
To: diane03760@vancouver.ca
Date: Tue., Nov 8, 2011 4:04 PM
Hi Diane,
What a big surprise yesterday!
I was expecting to see you on Wednesday or Thursday if you would ever show up at Joe Fortes Library.
So you appeared when I was not utterly prepared for that!
Anyway I was glad to know that you were sparkling as brightly as the happiest woman in the whole world.
That certainly told me that you're getting along with your boyfriend quite well. Right? :)
Although I wrote some negative aspects about your relationship in my blog, I knew that you were considerate, open-minded, warm-hearted, and well-cultured so that you must have found a man of the same character.
I'm pretty sure that your relation with your boyfriend will last long, if not for a hundred years. :)
Incidentally, do you think, I looked fat?
I doubt.
Actually, I couldn't eat jelly-fry in my home town, Gyoda, as much as Madame Taliesin who was crazy about the not-so-yummy fry.
I asked Madame Taliesin why she liked it so much.
Madame Taliesin said that she could taste the happy memories of Gyoda whenever she ate jelly-fry, and that she didn't really care about the real taste of the grub.
Come to think of it, I recall so many happy occasions with Madame Taliesin in Gyoda.
What kind of happy occasions?---you might ask :)
Well..., Madame Taliesin and I liked to stroll in the park of thousand-plus-year-old lotus flowers, which we call "Paradise flowers." Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ...
Lotus Park in Gyoda
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By the way, a couple of days ago, I read "Gift from the Sea" written by Anne Morrow Lindbergh---the wife of the famous American aviator.
As you know, she experienced the worst tragedy of the 20th century.
Tragedy of the 20th century
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Yet apparently she overcame it because she gave birth to five more children after the sad incident.
Her book in Japanese was reprinted more than 30 times---a bestseller in other words.
It became a modern-day classic in Japan.
I read the book in English for the first time.
What is so fascinating about the book?---you may ask.
Well..., I was impressed by her elegant and wise meditations on youth and age, love and marriage, solitude and relations, friends and family as she set them down during a brief vacation by the ocean.
Besides, Madame Lindbergh reminds me of you. :) He, he, he, he, he, ...
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"What makes you think so, Kato?"---you may ask. :)
So, I'll write an article about it tomorrow.
...hope you'll enjoy reading it.
Your truly romantic Taliesin,
Kato
So, Kato, you're telling me what makes you think that I'm like Madame Lindbergh, aren't you?
Oh yes, I am. I've realized that you seldom talk to me about your church, but I'm pretty sure that the church is your central part---something you cannot live without, right?
Well, I'd say so. Some people don't like to hear religious things, you know. And you aren't a religious person, are you?
No, I'm not.
So, what makes you think I'm like Madame Lindbergh? I haven't experienced any tragedy in my whole life---let alone a kidnap and a murder.
I'm not saying that Madame Lindbergh and you have a tragedy in common.
Then, are you saying that she and I have church activities in common?
Yes, I am. Madame Lindbergh wrote like this:
The church is still a great centering force for men and women, more needed than ever before... But are those who attend as ready to give themselves or to receive its messege as they used to be? Our daily life does not prepare us for contemplation. How can a single weekly hour of church, helpful as it may be, counteract the many daily hours of distraction that surround it? If we had our contemplative hour at home we might be readier to give ourselves at church and find ourselves more completely renewed. For the need for renewal is still there. The desire to be accepted whole, the desire to be seen as an individual, not as a collection of functions, the desire to give oneself completely and purposefully pursues us always, and has its part in pushing us into more and more distractions, illusory love affairs, or the haven of hospitals and doctors' offices.
The answere is not in going back, in putting woman in the home and giving her the broom and the needle again. A number of mechanical aids save us time and energy. But neither is the answer in dissipating our time and energy in more purposeless occupations, more accumulations which supposedly simplify life but actually burden it, more possessions which we have not time to use or appreciate, more diversions to fill up the void.
In other words, the answer is not in the feverish pursuit of centrifugal activities which only lead in the end to fragmentation. ... She will be shattered into a thousand pieces. On the contrary, she must consciously encourage those pursuits which oppose the centrifugal forces of today. Quiet time alone, contemplation, prayer, music, a centering line of thought or reading, of study or work. It can be physical or intellectual or artistic, any creative life proceeding from oneself. It need not be an enormous project or a great work. But it should be something of one's own. Arranging a bowl of flowers in the morning can give a sense of quiet in a crowded day---like writing a poem, or saying a prayer. What matters is that one be for a time inwardly attentive.
(ommitted)
Woman must be the pioneer in this turning inward for strength. In a sense she has always been the pioneer. Less able, until the last generation, to escape into outward activities, the very limitations of her life forced her to look inward. And from looking inward she gained as 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 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 outward solutions seems to be waning today. Men, too, are being 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?
SOURCE: pp. 54-58
"Gift from the Sea"
by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Published in 1955
Vintage Books, New York
(To be continued)