Shells

"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".
 
Anne Morrow Lindbergh - Gift from the Sea
 
"Let my soul beware that, like some empty shell or sunbleached skeleton, it be not cast away upon the sands of time - dead to Him, who comes to give me life.
Always, ever, I must be open, available totally to His incoming.  Thus I thrive and flourish with His life."
 
W. Phillip Keller - Sea Edge