Anna White
Anna White was an American Shaker Eldress, writer, songwriter, and social reformer, born in Brooklyn in 1831.
Over the course of her life, White worked across several overlapping vocations. As a Shaker Eldress, she occupied a position of spiritual and communal authority within the Shaker tradition, a role that informed her work in other areas. She was also active as a historian and preservationist, occupations that placed her in the business of recording and safeguarding the past. Her writing drew on these concerns, and her work as a hymnwriter and songwriter gave her output a devotional dimension alongside its historical and reformist character.
White's career brought together the roles of author, historian, and social reformer, suggesting a life engaged with both the inner life of her religious community and broader questions of society. She died on December 16, 1910. The convergence of sacred music, communal history, and reform work marks the recurring character of her contributions.
Quotes by Anna White
Anna White's insights on:
I felt like I was being carried over the threshold of a sisterhood of loss. I knew I was not walking alone, and that eventually I would bob back up to the surface of the deep, because the women around me showed me what healing looks like.
God wants to take the fears that you and I are holding onto with both hands. He throws them aside, effortless, and then takes our empty hands in His and fills them with his love. He is not a hard driver. He wants to provide.
The griefs that have been hardest for me were the ones I didn’t recognize as griefs, because they came in what were supposed to be the best times of my life. No one whispered in my ear that the best times, the ones that change our lives, are woven with the thread of loss.
I'm broken, but I have to learn how to live. I feel stuck together with scotch tape, like after any breath everything could come apart. If it does, if it all comes undone, I think I'll fall down and never rise again.
The road to the heart is not a long, linear path, but this turning. There is no race or competition, just me and God going deeper, carving a canyon to the soul.
This is the only advice I offer you. Pick the small thing, and carry it on. Let it change your life.
Every day is a new beginning, the building of a habit. Every action is a step in some direction. There is no pause in living.
In this week I see such a picture of life, hard and joyful pressed up together and sleeping in the same bed. They come knit together. The lines of pain run through the joy and remind us to go all in, because life is short. The joy edges the pain and gives us a reason to rise.
I am not enough in myself; I can barely make it through buying milk and school supplies. Thank goodness there is a Guardian to come before me and throw off the dark.