Category Archives: travel

Shaker Oval Boxes

Looking over my shelf of books, I found June Sprigg’s gift to me from many years ago.  Her small paperback, Simple Gifts,  details her summer with a group of Shaker women in New Hampshire, and it brought back memories of my visit to the Berkshires.  Her closing paragraph has her gift to the reader.

“…that summer, in final blessing, gave me three things that proved in time to be everything I have needed to keep me on my way: simple awareness of the path itself, a conviction that life has meaning worth the good fight, coupled with the truth of its wonderful, terrible cost; a North Star in the example of my Shaker friends, so that I can stay the course and regain my bearings when I wander off and get lost; and, of ever greater comfort as the years go by, recognition of fellow travelers on the journey, before me and behind me, through the numberless days and years and seasons of our kind’s time on earth.  Those who go seeking are never alone.”