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All That Paddling Around In The Alphabet Soup Of One's Childhood, Scooping Up Letters, Hoping To Arrange Them Into Enlightening Sentences That Would Explain Why Things Had Turned Out The Way They Had. It Evoked A Certain Mutiny In Me.

-Sue Monk Kidd

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All That Paddling Around

Sue Monk Kidd

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All That Paddling Around In The Alphabet Soup Of One's Childhood, Scooping Up Letters, Hoping To Arrange Them Into Enlightening Sentences That Would Explain Why Things Had Turned Out The Way They Had. It Evoked A Certain Mutiny In Me.

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When It's Time To Die, Go Ahead And Die, And When It's Time To Live, Live. Don't Sort-of-maybe Live, But Live Like You're Going All Out, Like You're Not Afraid.

Back In The Autumn I Had Awakened To A Growing Darkness And Cacophony, As If Something In The Depths Were Crying Out. A Whole Chorus Of Voices. Orphaned Voices. They Seemed To Speak For All The Unlived Parts Of Me, And They Came With A Force And Dazzle That I Couldn't Contain. They Seemed To Explode The Boundaries Of My Existence. I Know Now That They Were The Clamor Of A New Self Struggling To Be Born.

I Think Many People Need, Even Require, A Narrative Version Of Their Life. I Seem To Be One Of Them. Writing Memoir Is, In Some Ways, A Work Of Wholeness.

I Vividly Remember The Summer Of 1964 With Its Voter Registration Drives, Boiling Racial Tensions, And The Erupting Awareness Of The Cruelty Of Racism. I Was Never The Same After That Summer.

The Time To Assert One's Right Is When It's Denied!

When Compassion Wakes Up In Us, We Find Ourselves More Willing To Become Vulnerable, To Take The Risk Of Entering The Pain Of Others.

I Felt Amazed At The Choosing One Had To Do, Over And Over A Million Times Daily--choosing Love, Then Choosing It Again...how Loving And Being In Love Could Be So Different.

Drifting Off To Sleep, I Thought About Her. How Nobody Is Perfect. How You Just Have To Close Your Eyes And Breathe Out And Let The Puzzle Of The Human Heart Be What It Is.

I Said, "if I Was A Negro Girl-" He Placed His Fingers Across My Lips So I Tasted His Saltiness. "we Can't Think Of Changing Our Skin," He Said. "change The World-that's How We Gotta Think."

Now And Then Sprays Of Rain Flew Over And Misted Our Faces. Every Time I Refused To Wipe Away The Wetness. It Made The World Seem So Alive To Me. I Couldn't Help But Envy The Way A Good Storm Got Everyone's Attention.

I Realized It For The First Time In My Life: There Is Nothing But Mystery In The World, How It Hides Behind The Fabric Of Our Poor, Browbeat Days, Shining Brightly, And We Don't Even Know It.

Yes, Here I Am Returning, The Woman Who Bore Herself To The Bottom And Back. Who Wanted To Swim Like Dolphins, Leaping Waves And Diving. Who Wanted Only To Belong To Herself.

You Gotta Imagine What's Never Been.

A Spiritual Pilgrim Needs To Discern When His Or Her Life Is Stunted In An Old Field And Find The Courage And Determination To Go To A "new Land" That The Lord Will Show. (abraham-journey) ...so That You Can Find The Wholeness You Seek.

So I Taught Sunday School And Brought Dishes To All Manner Of Potlucks And Tried To Adjust The Things I Heard From The Pulpit To My Increasingly Incongruent Faith.

It Was The Oldest Sound There Was. Souls Flying Away.

Finally, I Began To Write About Becoming An Older Woman And The Trepidation It Stirred. The Small, Telling "betrayals" Of My Body. The Stalled, Eerie Stillness In My Writing, Accompanied By An Ache For Some Unlived Destiny. I Wrote About The Raw, Unsettled Feelings Coursing Through Me, The Need To Divest And Relocate, The Urge To Radically Simplify And Distill Life Into A New, Unknown Meaning.

Whatever Else You Do, Listen To Your Deepest Self. Love Her And Be True To Her, Speak Her Truth, Always.

I Marvel At How Good I Was Before I Met Him, How I Lived Molded To The Smallest Space Possible, My Days The Size Of Little Beads That Passed Without Passion Through My Fingers. So Few People Know What They're Capable Of. At Forty-two I'd Never Done Anything That Took My Own Breath Away, And I Suppose Now That Was Part Of The Problem - My Chronic Inability To Astonish Myself.

Regrets Don't Help Anything.

I Can't Think Of Anything I'd Rather Have More Than Somebody Lovin' Me.

I'd Heard August Say More Than Once, "if You Need Something From Somebody, Always Give That Person A Way To Hand It To You." T. Ray Needed A Face-saving Way To Hand Me Over, And August Was Giving It To Him.

How Could I Choose Someone Who Would Force Me To Give Up My Own Small Reach For Meaning? I Chose Myself, And Without Consolation.

The World Depends Upon The Small Beating In Your Heart.

The Symbol Of Goddess Gives Us Permission. She Teaches Us To Embrace The Holiness Of Every Natural, Ordinary, Sensual Dying Moment. Patriarchy May Try To Negate Body & Flee Earth With Its Constant Heartbeat Of Death, But Goddess Forces Us Back To Embrace Them, To Take Our Human Life In Our Arms & Clasp It For The Divine Life It Is - The Nice, Sanitary, Harmonious Moment As Well As The Painful, Dark, Splintered Ones.

A Moment Of Grace. There Rose Up Within Me A Profound Sense Of Being Loved. I Felt "gathered Together" And Encircled By A Presence Completely Loving, As If I Were Enveloped By The Music Of A Love Song Created Just For Me. It Was Not Overwhelming Or Even Emotional. Just A Warm Knowing That I Was In God's Loving Embrace...centered And Unified There. [love]encounters Cannot Be Analyzed, Only Shared. If You Take A Butterfly, Robert Frost Said, And Pin It Down Into A Box, You No Longer Have A Butterfly.

There Is No Place So Awake And Alive As The Edge Of Becoming. But More Than That, Birthing The Kind Of Woman Who Can Authentically Say, 'my Soul Is My Own,' And Then Embody It In Her Life, Her Spirituality, And Her Community Is Worth The Risk And Hardship.

There's Release In Knowing The Truth No Matter How Anguishing It Is. You Come Finally To The Irreducible Thing, And There's Nothing Left To Do But Pick It Up And Hold It. Then, At Last, You Can Enter The Severe Mercy Of Acceptance.

We Become What We Pay Attention To.

Most People Don't Have Any Idea About All The Complicated Life Going On Inside A Hive. Bees Have A Secret Life We Don't Know Anything About.

I'm Tired Of Carrying Around The Weight Of The World. I'm Just Going To Lay It Down Now. It's My Time To Die, And It's Your Time To Live. Don't Mess It Up.

Stories Are Amazing And Powerful Because They Can Resonate With People Depending On Their Needs And Experiences And Speak Truths We Need To Hear In That Moment In Time.

Probably One Or Two Moments In Your Whole Life You Will Hear A Dark Whispering Spirit, A Voice Coming From The Center Of Things. It Will Have Blades For Lips And Will Not Stop Until It Speaks The One Secret Thing At The Heart Of It All. Kneeling On The Floor, Unable To Stop Shuddering, I Heard It Plainly. It Said, You Are Unlovable.

Up Until Then I'd Thought That White People And Colored People Getting Along Was The Big Aim, But After That I Decided Everybody Being Colorless Together Was A Better Plan. I Thought Of That Policeman, Eddie Hazelwurst, Saying I'd Lowered Myself To Be In This House Of Colored Women, And For The Very Life Of Me I Couldn't Understand How It Had Turned Out This Way, How Colored Women Had Become The Lowest Ones On The Totem Pole. You Only Had To Look At Them To See How Special They Were, Like Hidden Royalty Among Us. Eddie Hazelwurst. What A Shitbucket.

If Someone Should Ask Me, 'what Does The Soul Do?' I Would Say, It Does Two Things. It Loves. And It Creates. Those Are Its Primary Acts.

In Recent Years My Understanding Of God Had Evolved Into Increasingly Remote Abstractions. I'd Come To Think Of God In Terms Like Divine Reality, The Absolute, Or The One Who Holds Us In Being. I Do Believe That God Is Beyond Any Form And Image, But It Has Grown Clear To Me That I Need An Image In Order To Relate. I Need An Image In Order To Carry On An Intimate Conversation With What Is So Vast, Amorphous, Mysterious, And Holy That It Becomes Ungraspable. I Mean, Really, How To You Become Intimate With Divine Reality? Or The Absolute?

You Are My Everlasting Home. Don't You Ever Be Afraid. I Am Enough. We Are Enough.

Soul. The Word Rebounded To Me, And I Wondered, As I Often Had, What It Was Exactly. People Talked About It All The Time, But Did Anybody Actually Know? Sometimes I'd Pictured It Like A Pilot Light Burning Inside A Person--a Drop Of Fire From The Invisible Inferno People Called God. Or A Squashy Substance, Like A Piece Of Clay Or Dental Mold, Which Collected The Sum Of A Person's Experiences--a Million Indentations Of Happiness, Desperation, Fear, All The Small Piercings Of Beauty We've Ever Known.

Into Every Life A Little Rain Must Fall.

I Wondered What It Was Like To Be Inside Her, Just A Curl Of Flesh Swimming In The Darkness, The Quiet Things That Had Passed Between Us.

We Can't Think Of Changing Our Skin Color. Change The World - That's How We Gotta Think.

Someone Who Thinks Death Is The Scariest Thing Doesn't Know A Thing About Life.

You Think You Want To Know Something, And Then Once You Do, All You Can Think About Is Erasing It From Your Mind.

When A Woman Starts To Disentangle Herself From Patriarchy, Ultimately She Is Abandoned To Her Own Self.

I Found That I Could Not Climb My Way Up To God In A Blaze Of Doing And Performing. Rather, I Had To Descend Into The Depths Of Myself And Find God There In The Darkness Of Troubled Waters.

It's Easy To Operate Under The Illusion That What We Are Doing Is So Important We Cannot Stop Doing It. ... Stopping Is A Spiritual Act. It Is The Refuge Where We Drink Life In.

Where Do You Come From?"...this Is The Number One Most-asked Question In All Of South Carolina. We Want To Know If You Are One Of Us, If Your Cousin Knows Our Cousin, If Your Little Sister Went To School With Our Big Brother, If You Go To The Same Baptist Church As Our Ex-boss. We Are Looking For Ways Our Stories Fit Together.

You've Got To Figure Out Which End Of The Needle You're Gon' Be, The One That's Fastened To The Thread Or The End That Pierces The Cloth.

Empathy Is The Most Mysterious Transaction That The Human Soul Can Have, And Its Accessible To All Of Us, But We Have To Give Ourselves The Opportunity To Identify, To Plunge Ourselves In A Story Where We See The World From The Bottom Up Or Through Anothers Eyes Or Heart.

What's Wrong With Living In A Dream World? You Have To Wake Up.

Every Human Being On The Face Of The Earth Has A Steel Plate In His Head, But If You Lie Down Now And Then And Get Still As You Can, It Will Slide Open Like Elevator Doors, Letting In All The Secret Thoughts That Have Been Standing Around So Patiently, Pushing The Button For A Ride To The Top. The Real Troubles In Life Happen When Those Hidden Doors Stay Closed For Too Long.

It's Always Been My Hope That I Would Write A Story That Would Inspire And Would Connect With People In A Way That Would Touch Hearts.

At Forty-two, I Had Never Done Anything That Took My Own Breath Away, And I Suppose Now That Was Part Of The Problem--my Chronic Inability To Astonish Myself. I Promise You, No One Judges Me More Harshly Than I Do Myself; I Caused A Brilliant Wreckage. Some Say I Fell From Grace; They're Being Kind. I Didn't Fall. I Dove.

We Are So Limited, You Have To Use The Same Word For Loving Rosaleen As You Do For Loving Coke With Peanuts. Isn't That A Shame We Don't Have Many More Ways To Say It?

My Children Have Always Existed At The Deepest Center Of Me, Right There In The Heart/hearth, But I Struggled With The Powerful Demands Of Motherhood, Chafing Sometimes At The Way They Pulled Me Away From My Separate Life, Not Knowing How To Balance Them With My Unwieldy Need For Solitude And Creative Expression.

When He Spoke, The Roughness Was Gone From His Voice. "i Could Tell You I Did It. That's What You Wanna Hear. I Could Tell You She Did It To Herself, But Both Ways I'd Be Lying. It Was You Who Did It, Lily. You Didn't Mean It, But It Was You.

The Only Wrong Thing, Perhaps, Is Permanently Hesitating On The Verge Of Courage.

Novels Attempt To Render Human Experience; That's Really All They Are. They Are Meant To Convey Empathy For The Character.

The Translucence That Comes When Life Hardens Into A Bead Of Such Cruel Perfection You See It With The Purest Clarity. Everything Suddenly There--life As It Truly Is, Enormous, Appalling, Devastating. You See The Great Sinkholes It Makes In People And The Harrowing Lengths To Which Love Will Go To Fill Them.

Rebirth Is Almost Impossible Without The Darkness.....i Tell Myself I Am Experiencing The Death Of Myself As Mother, The Death Of Myself As A Younger Woman -- Precious Old Lives Going By The Wayside. Of Course, I Should Let Myself Grieve. To Deny The Grief Is To Squander A Transforming And Radiant Possibility.

Grandmotherhood Initiated Me Into A World Of Play, Where All Things Became Fresh, Alive, And Honest Again Through My Grandchildren's Eyes. Mostly, It Retaught Me Love.

Look, I Know You Meant Well Creating The World And All, But How Could You Let It Get Away From You Like This? How Come You Couldn't Stick With Your Original Idea Of Paradise? People's Lives Were A Mess.

It Was The First Time I'd Ever Said The Words To Another Person, And The Sound Of Them Broke Open My Heart.

Loss Takes Up Inside Of Everything Sooner Or Later And Eats Right Through It.

Sooner Or Later

I Hadn't Been Out To The Hives Before, So To Start Off She Gave Me A Lesson In What She Called 'bee Yard Etiquette'. She Reminded Me That The World Was Really One Bee Yard, And The Same Rules Work Fine In Both Places. Don't Be Afraid, As No Life-loving Bee Wants To Sting You. Still, Don't Be An Idiot; Wear Long Sleeves And Pants. Don't Swat. Don't Even Think About Swatting. If You Feel Angry, Whistle. Anger Agitates While Whistling Melts A Bee's Temper. Act Like You Know What You're Doing, Even If You Don't. Above All, Send The Bees Love. Every Little Thing Wants To Be Loved.

You Can't Stop Your Heart From Loving, Really -- It's Like Standing Out There In The Ocean Yelling At The Waves To Stop.

Madonna Kolbenschlag Suggest That If An Awakened Woman Forgoes Innocence And Denial, If She Refuses To Make Compromises With Herself And Defect To Patriarchy, Then Her Only Option Becomes Deviance. I Chose Deviance. I Chose To Be A Loving Dissident. To Dance The Dance Of Dissidence. This Stance Can Be Assumed From The Inside Or The Outside. Whichever Place We Choose, The Important Thing Is Having The Sustained Will To Be, Act, And Speak From The Ground Of Our Feminine Souls.

She Didn't Even Know How Dangerous The Truth Could Be, All The Tiny, Shattering Seeds It Carried.

You Don't Have To Place Your Hand On Mary's Heart To Get Strength And Consolation And Rescue, And All The Other Things We Need To Get Through Life. You Can Place It Right Here On Your Own Heart. Your Own Heart.

From Now On When People Asked Me What I Wanted To Be When I Grew Up, I Planned To Say, Amnesiac.

You Have To Find A Mother Inside Yourself. We All Do. Even If We Already Have A Mother, We Still Have To Find This Part Of Ourselves Inside

T. Ray Said 'who Do You Think You Are? Julias Shakespeare?' The Man Sincerely Thought That Was Shakespeare's First Name, And If You Think I Should Have Corrected Him, You Are Ignorant About The Art Of Survival.

It Only Meant That My Natural Inclination Was To Draw My "energy" From Within Instead Of Seeking It Outside Myself, Plus My Mom Was An Introvcert, And So Were A Lot Of Normal People. The Problem Was I Was Shy On Top Of That. And We All Know How The World Loves A Shy Introvert.

That's What I Told Myself Five Hundred Times: Impossibility. I Can Tell You This Much: The Word Is A Great Big Log Thrown On The Fires Of Love. ~page 133.

My Mother's Life Was Way Too Heavy For Me.

Actually, You Can Be Bad At Something...but If You Love Doing It, That Will Be Enough. - August Boatwright

I Realize That I Can Be With Someone, But On A Deeper Level I'm Not Available To Them At All. I Have Attention Deficit Disorder Of The Soul.

It Shocks Me How I Wish For...what Is Lost And Cannot Come Back.

You Have To Know When To Prod And When To Be Quiet, When To Let Things Take Their Course.

Embodiment Means We No Longer Say, I Had This Experience; We Say, I Am This Experience.

There Is Nothing Perfect...only Life.

If You Aren't Giving People Something To Talk About, You've Become Too Dull.

This Is The Autumn Of Wonders, Yet Every Day, Every Single Day, I Go Back To That Burned Afternoon In August When T. Ray Left. I Go Back To That One Moment When I Stood In The Driveway With Small Rocks And Clumps Of Dirt Around My Feet And Looked Back At The Porch. And There They Were. All These Mothers. I Have More Mothers Than Any Eight Girls Off The Street. They Are The Moons Shining Over Me.

God Is At The Tip Of Our Scalpels, Our Screwdrivers, Our Computer Terminals, Our Dust Rags, Our Vacuum Cleaners, Our Pencils And Pens. He Is With Us In Our Wheelchairs, Or On Our Hospital Beds, When All We Can Do Is Sit Or Lie Flat. When We Envision Him And His Purpose In What We Do, Then We Begin To Grow Aware Of His Presence In The Middle Of It. We Are Able To Engage In Our Inward Conversation With Him As We Work, Naturally, Without Strain. He Becomes Our Partner, Our Collaborator.

I Worried So Much About How I Looked And Whether I Was Doing Things Right, I Felt Half The Time I Was Impersonating A Girl Instead Of Really Being One.

Every Living Creature On The Earth Is Special. You Want To Be The One That Puts An End To One Of Them?

I Know You've Run Away - Everybody Gets The Urge To Do That Some Time - But Sooner Or Later You'll Want To Go Home.

Until We Look From The Bottom Up We Have Nothing.

You Forgive What You Can, When You Can. That's All You Can Do.to Forgive Does Not Mean Overlooking The Offense And Pretending It Never Happened. Forgiveness Means Releasing Our Rage And Our Need To Retaliate, No Longer Dwelling On The Offense, The Offender, And The Suffering, And Rising To A Higher Love. It Is An Act Of Letting Go So That We Ourselves Can Go On.

To Remain Silent In The Face Of Evil Is Itself A Form Of Evil.

I Felt Someone Should Personally Thank Every Rock Out There For The Human Misery It Had Absorbed. We Should Kiss Them One By One & Say, We Are Sorry, But Something Strong & Lasting Had To Do This For May, & You Are The Chosen Ones. God Bless Your Rock Hearts.

After You Get Stung, You Can't Get Unstung No Matter How Much You Whine About It.

How Often Do We Do That, He Wondered--look At Someone And Fail To See What's Really There?

When You Can't Go Forward, And You Can't Go Backward, And You Can't Stay Where You Are Without Killing Off Something Deep And Vital In Yourself, You Are On The Edge Of Creation.

To Fashion An Inner Story Of Our Pain Carries Us Into The Heart Of It, Which Is Where Rebirth Inevitably Occurs.

The Feminine Journey Is A Story Unfolding, And Its Epiphanies Come Through Real Things, Through Tangibles Like Walking Sticks And Dreams And Deer Antlers--all Of Which We Might Miss Without Taking Time And Space In Deep Being.

Were All Yearning For A Wedge Of Sky, Aren't We? I Suspect God Plants These Yearnings In Us So We'll At Least Try And Change The Course Of Things. We Must Try, That's All.

To Be Fully Human, Fully Myself, To Accept All That I Am, All That You Envision, This Is My Prayer. Walk With Me Out To The Rim Of Life, Beyond Security. Take Me To The Exquisite Edge Of Courage And Release Me To Become.

He'd Gone To Church For Forty Years And Was Only Getting Worse. It Seemed Like This Should Tell God Something.

Place A Beehive On My Grave And Let The Honey Soak Through. When I'm Dead And Gone, That's What I Want From You. The Streets Of Heaven Are Gold And Sunny, But I'll Stick With My Plot And A Pot Of Honey. Place A Beehive On My Grave And Let The Honey Soak Through.

Honeybees Depend Not Only On Physical Contact With The Colony, But Also Require It's Social Companionship And Support. Isolate A Honeybee From Her Sisters And She Will Soon Die.

A Lot Of Time You Write Out Of Some Unconscious Place. I Try To Trust What Is Coming And Where It Wants To Take Me.

Have You Ever Written A Letter You Knew You Could Never Mail But You Needed To Write It Anyway?

Nothing Is Fair In This World. You Might As Well Get That Straight Right Now

The Body Knows Things A Long Time Before The Mind Catches Up To Them. I Was Wondering What My Body Knew That I Didn't.

You Put His Brain In A Bird, The Bird Would Fly Backwards" -secret Life Of The Bees

I Never Know How To Give Advice To A Writer Because There's So Much You Could Say, And It's Hard To Translate Your Own Experience. But Of Course, I Always Try. The Main Thing That I Usually End Up Saying Is To Read A Lot. To Read A Great Deal And To Learn From That.

I Didn't Know Then What I Wanted, But The Ache For It Was Palpable.

I Sit In My New Room And Write Everything Down. My Heart Never Stops Talking.

... In The End, Goddess Is Just A Word. It Simply Means The Divine In Female Form.

When Had My Fear Of Broken Plates Gotten So Grandiose? My Desire For Extravagant Moments So Small?

I'd Forgotten How That Sort Of Craving Felt, How It Rose Suddenly And Loudly From The Pit Of My Stomach Like A Flock Of Startle Birds, Then Floated Back Down In The Slow, Beguiling Way Of Feathers.

Every Little Thing Wants To Be Loved.

We Need Goddess Consciousness To Reveal Earth's Holiness. Divine Feminine Imagery Opens Up The Notion That The Earth Is The Body Of The Divine, And When That Happens, The Divine Cannot Be Contained Solely In A Book, Church, Dogma, Liturgy, Theological System, Or Transcendent Spirituality. The Earth Is No Longer A Mere Backdrop Until We Get To Heaven, Something Secondary And Expendable. Mater Becomes Inspirited; It Breathes Divinity. Earth Comes Alive And Sacred. And We Find Ourselves Alive In The Midst Of Her And Forever Altered.

Divine Feminine

I Tried To Imagine A Church That Did Not Support Its Country's Wars As A Matter Of Patriotic Course And Instead Stood Against The Devastation And Suffering They Caused In People's Lives." (from 'the Dance Of The Dissident Daughter'.)

You Have Untold Strengths And Resources Inside. You Have Your Glorious Self.

The Most Significant Gifts Are The Ones Most Easily Overlooked. Small, Everyday Blessings: Woods, Health, Music, Laughter, Memories, Books, Family, Friends, Second Chances, Warm Fireplaces, And All The Footprints Scattered Throughout Our Days.

If You Need Something From Somebody Always Give That Person A Way To Hand It To You.

That's The Sacred Intent Of Life, Of God--to Move Us Continuously Toward Growth, Toward Recovering All That Is Lost And Orphaned Within Us And Restoring The Divine Image Imprinted On Our Soul.

I'll Write This All Down For You," I Said. "i'll Put It In A Story." I Don't Know If That's What He Wanted To Ask Me, But It's Something Everybody Wants--for Someone To See The Hurt Done To Them And Set It Down Like It Matters.

We Must Err , Do So On The Side Of Audacity

You Can Tell Which Girls Lack Mothers By The Look Of Their Hair.

Betrayal Of Any Kind Is Hard, But Betrayal By One's Religion Is Excruciating. It Makes You Want To Rage And Weep.

You Create A Path Of Your Own By Looking Within Yourself And Listening To Your Soul, Cultivating Your Own Ways Of Experiencing The Sacred And Then Practicing It. Practicing Until You Make It A Song That Sings You.

I Eventually Found That The Soul Is More Than An Immortal Commodity To Win And Save. It Is The Repository Of The Inner Divine, The Truest Part Of Us.

Sometimes You Want To Fall On Your Knees And Thank God In Heaven For All The Poor News Reporting That Goes On In The World.

There's Nothing Like A Song About Lost Love To Remind You How Everything Precious Can Slip From The Hinges Where You've Hung It So Careful.

My Ultimate Authority Is The Divine Voice In My Own Soul. Period.

Sometimes I Didn't Even Feel Like Getting Out Of Bed. I Took To Wearing My Days-of-the-week Panties Out Of Order. It Could Be Monday And I'd Have On Underwear Saying Thursday. I Just Didn't Care.

The Redness Had Seeped From The Day And Night Was Arranging Herself Around Us. Cooling Things Down, Staining And Dyeing The Evening Purple And Blue Black.

Journal Became A Sanctuary Where I Could Pour Out In Honesty My Pain And Joy. It Recorded My Footsteps And Helped Me Understand Where I Was Standing, Where I Had Been, And Even Where God Pointed.

How Did We Ever Get The Idea That God Would Supply Us On Demand With Quick Fixes, That God Is Merely A Rescuer And Not A Midwife?

As An Adolescent, I Went To Charm School, Where I Learned To Pour Tea And Relate To Boys, Which, As I Recall, Meant Giving Them The Pickle Jar To Unscrew, Whether It Was Too Hard For Me Or Not.

Nobody Should Go Through Life Without Falling In Love.

Falling In Love

There Was Nothing I Hated Worse Than Clumps Of Whispering Girls Who Got Quiet When I Passed. I Started Picking Scabs Off My Body And, When I Didn't Have Any, Gnawing The Flesh Around My Fingernails Until I Was A Bleeding Wreck. I Worried So Much About How I Looked And Whether I Was Doing Things Right, I Felt Half The Time I Was Impersonating A Girl Instead Of Really Being Me.

One Day I Will Have To Forgive Life For Ending, I Tell Myself. I Will Have To Learn How To Let Life Be Life With Its Unbearable Finality ... Just Be What It Is.

I Could Even Feel How Perishable All My Moments Really Were, How All My Life They Had Come To Me Begging To Be Lived, To Be Cherished Even.

I Wished She'd Been Smart Enough, Or Loving Enough, To Realize Everybody Has Burdens That Crush Them, Only They Don't Give Up Their Children.

Women Themselves Condition Their Daughters To Serve The System Of Male Primacy. If A Daughter Challenges It, The Mother Will Generally Defend The System Rather Than Her Daughter. These Mothers, Victims Themselves, Have Unwittingly Become Wounded Wounders. Women Need To Attack Culture's Oppression Of Women, For There Truly Is A Godlike Socializing Power That Induces Women To "buy In" Or Collude, But We Also Need To Confront Our Own Part In Accepting Male Dominance And Take Responsibility Where Appropriate.

Once You Know The Truth, You Can’t Ever Go Back And Pick Up Your Suitcase Of Lies. Heavier Or Not, The Truth Is Yours Now.

The Only Way I Have Ever Understood, Broken Free, Emerged, Healed, Forgiven, Flourished, And Grown Powerful Is By Asking The Hardest Questions And Then Living Into The Answers Through Opening Up To My Own Terror And Transmuting It Into Creativity. I Have Gotten Nowhere By Retreating Into Hand-me-down Sureties Or Resisting The Tensions That Truth Ignited.

The Hardest Thing On Earth Is Choosing What Matters.

We Walked Along The River With The Words Streaming Behind Us Like Ribbons In The Night.

I Often Went To Catholic Mass Or Eucharist At The Episcopal Church, Nourished By The Symbol And Power Of This Profound Feeding Ritual. It Never Occurred To Me How Odd It Was That Women, Who Have Presided Over The Domain Of Food And Feeding For Thousands Of Years, Were Historically And Routinely Barred From Presiding Over It In A Spiritual Context. And When The Priest Held Out The Host And Said, "this Is My Body, Given For You," Not Once Did I Recognize That It Is Women In The Act Of Breastfeeding Who Most Truly Embody Those Words And Who Are Also Most Excluded From Ritually Saying Them.

Every Person On The Face Of The Earth Makes Mistakes, Lily. Every Last One. We're All So Human. Your Mother Made A Terrible Mistake, But She Tried To Fix It.' 'good Night,' I Said, And Rolled Onto My Side. 'there Is Nothing Perfect,' August Said From The Doorway. 'there Is Only Life.

The World Will Give You That Once In Awhile, A Brief Timeout; The Boxing Bell Rings And You Go To Your Corner, Where Somebody Dabs Mercy On Your Beat-up Life.

Sunset Is The Saddest Light There Is.

Where Had I Been That I Didn't Know About Imaginary Friends? I Could See The Point Of It. How A Lost Part Of Yourself Steps Out And Remind You Who You Could Be With A Little Work.

Elizabeth A. Johnson Explains That Including Divine Female Symbols And Images Not Only Challenges The Dominance Of Male Images But Also Calls Into Question The Structure Of Patriarchy Itself.

Nobody Around Here Had Ever Seen A Lady Beekeeper Till Her. She Liked To Tell Everybody That Women Made The Best Beekeepers, 'cause They Have A Special Ability Built Into Them To Love Creatures That Sting. It Comes From Years Of Loving Children And Husbands.

I Grew Up In The American South And Came Of Age In The 1960s, An Incredibly Turbulent Time. It Was As If The Seams Of American Life Were Being Ripped Apart With Riots And Protests.

Turbulent Times

All My Life I've Thought I Needed Someone To Complete Me, Now I Know I Need To Belong To Myself.

The Whole Problem With People Is They Don't Know What Matters And What Doesn't.

Just To Be Is Holy, Just To Live Is A Gift.

I Wanted To Know What Happened When Two People Felt It. Would It Divide The Hurt In Two, Make It Lighter To Bear, The Way Feeling Someone's Joy Seemed To Double It?

We Write To Taste Life Twice," Anais Nin Wrote, "in The Moment And In Retrospection.

You Can Go Other Places, All Right - You Can Live On The Other Side Of The World, But You Can't Ever Leave Home

Gazing Into The Mirror, I Saw Myself As I Was-a Black Silhouette In The Room, A Woman Whose Darkness Had Completely Leaked Through.

The True Self Is Not Our Creation, But God's. It Is The Self We Are In Our Depths. It Is Our Capacity For Divinity And Transcendence.

We Have To Acknowledge Sometimes That This Moment Is Enough. This Place Is Enough. I Am Enough.

It's Something Everybody Wants-for Someone To See The Hurt Done To Them And Set It Down Like It Matters.

In A Way, Humans Are Not Made Of Skin And Bones As Such, As We're Made Of Stories.

I Came To Believe That My True Identity Goes Beyond The Outer Roles I Play. It Transcends The Ego. I Came To Understand That There Is An Authentic 'i' Within - An 'i Am,' Or Divine Spark Within The Soul.

Knowing Can Be A Curse On A Person's Life. I'd Traded In A Pack Of Lies For A Pack Of Truth, And I Didn't Know Which One Was Heavier.

I Believe In The Goodness Of Imagination.

The Question Occurred To Me: Well, If That's So, If The Divine Is Ultimately Formless And Genderless, What's The Big Deal? Why All This Bother? The Bother Is Because We Have No Other Way Of Speaking About The Absolute. We Need Forms And Images. Without Them We Have No Way Of Relating To The Divine. Symbol And Image Create A Universal Spiritual Language. It's The Language The Soul Understands.

Knowing Can Be A Curse On A Person's Life. I'd Traded In A Pack Of Lies For A Pack Of Truth, And I Didn't Know Which One Was Heavier. Which One Took The Most Strength To Carry Around? It Was A Ridiculous Question, Though, Because Once You Know The Truth, You Can't Ever Go Back And Pick Up Your Suitcase Of Lies. Heavier Or Not, The Truth Is Yours Now.

I Learned A Long Time Ago That Some People Would Rather Die Than Forgive. It's A Strange Truth, But Forgiveness Is A Painful And Difficult Process. It's Not Something That Happens Overnight. It's An Evolution Of The Heart.

It Takes A Bee 10,000,000 Trips To Collect Enough Nectar To Make 1 Pound Of Honey.

I Realize What A Strange In-between Place I Am In. The Young Woman Inside Has Turned To Go, But The Old Woman Has Not Shown Up.

Stopping Is A Spiritual Art. It Is The Refuge Where We Drink Life In.

I Have Noticed That If You Look Carefully At People's Eyes The First Five Seconds They Look At You, The Truth Of Their Feelings Will Shine Through For Just An Instant Before It Flickers Away.

So Few People Know What They're Capable Of.

In The Photograph By My Bed My Mother Is Perpetually Smiling On Me. I Guess I Have Forgiven Us Both, Although Sometimes In The Night My Dreams Will Take Me Back To The Sadness, And I Have To Wake Up And Forgive Us Again.

It Is The Peculiar Nature Of The World To Go On Spinning No Matter What Sort Of Heartbreak Is Happening.

History Is Not Just Facts And Events. History Is Also A Pain In The Heart And We Repeat History Until We Are Able To Make Another's Pain In The Heart Our Own.

Our Earlier Lives Aren't Wrong, They Are Just Pre-construction. Our Lives Are Meant To Unfold, To Evolve, And That's Good. The Only Wrong Thing, Perhaps, Is Permanently Hesitating On The Verge Of Courage, Which Would Prevent This Process From Taking Place.

When It Comes To Religion Today, We Tend To Be Long On Butterflies And Short On Cocoons. Somehow We're Going To Have To Relearn That The Deep Things Of God Don't Come Suddenly.

This Is What I Know About Myself. She Was All I Wanted. And I Took Her Away.

In Radical Optimism, Beatrice Bruteau Sets Forth A Deep And Shining Vision Of Spirituality, One That Guides The Reader Into The Contemplative Life And The Very Root Of Our Being. Dr. Bruteau Is A Philosopher Of Great Measure Whose Work Should Be Required Reading For All Who Seek The Deepest Truth About Themselves.

Contemplative Life

All That Paddling Around In The Alphabet Soup Of One's Childhood, Scooping Up Letters, Hoping To Arrange Them Into Enlightening Sentences That Would Explain Why Things Had Turned Out The Way They Had. It Evoked A Certain Mutiny In Me.

I Felt A Trembling Along My Skin, A Treaveling Current That Moved Up My Spine, Down My Arms, Pulsing Out From My Fingertips. I Was Practically Radiating. The Body Knows Things A Long Time Before The Mind Catches Up To Them. I Was Wondering What My Body Knew That I Didn't.

We Need Not Avoid Our Active Lives, But Simply Bring To Them A New Vision And Shift Of Gravity. For In The Center We Are Rooted In God's Love. In Such A Place There Is No Need For Striving And Impatience And Dashing About Seeking Approval.

The Monk At St. Meinrad Took His Hands And Placed Them On My Shoulders, Peered Straight Into My Eyes And Said, ‘i Hope You’ll Hear What I’m About To Tell You. I Hope You’ll Hear It All The Way Down To Your Toes. When You’re Waiting, You’re Not Doing Nothing. You’re Doing The Most Important Something There Is. You’re Allowing Your Soul To Grow Up. If You Can’t Be Still And Wait, You Can’t Become What God Created You To Be.

Standing There, I Loved Myself And I Hated Myself. That's What The Black Mary Did To Me, Made Me Feel My Glory And My Shame At The Same Time.

I Watched Him, Filled With Tenderness And Ache, Wondering What It Was That Connected Us. Was It The Wounded Places Down Inside People That Sought Each Other Out, That Bred A Kind Of Love Between Them?

In A Weird Way I Must Have Loved My Little Collection Of Hurts And Wounds. They Provided Me With Some Real Nice Sympathy, With The Feeling I Was Exceptional... What A Special Case I Was.

I Don't Remember What They Said, Only The Fury Of Their Words, How The Air Turned Raw And Full Of Welts. Later It Would Remind Me Of Birds Trapped Inside A Closed Room, Flinging Themselves Against The Windows And The Walls, Against Each Other.

The Second Thing I Wrote Down That Day Was That Exclusive Male Imagery Of The Divine Not Only Instilled An Imbalance Within Human Consciousness, It Legitimized Patriarchal Power In The Culture At Large. Here Alone Is Enough Reason To Recover The Divine Feminine, For There Is A Real And Undeniable Connection Between The Repression Of The Feminine In Our Deity And The Repression Of Women.

Divine Feminine

Still Everyone, Including The Abbot, Had Said That He Was Running Away From His Grief. They'd Had No Idea What They Were Talking About. He'd Cradled His Grief, Almost To The Point Of Loving It. For So Long He Refused To Give It Up, Because Leaving It Behind Was Like Leaving Her.

People Can Start Out One Way, And By The Time Life Gets Through With Them They End Up Completely Different.

Sometimes, In Order To Say Yes To What Matters Most, I Must Say No To Good Things.

What Has Happened To Our Ability To Dwell In The Unknowing, To Live Inside A Question And Coexist With The Tensions Of Uncertainty? Where Is Our Willingness To Incubate Pain And Let It Birth Something New? What Has Happened To Patient Unfolding, To Endurance? These Things Are What Form The Ground Of Waiting.

The Awakening Passed From Simple Recognition Of My Need For God At The Center Of My Life, To A Depth Where The Will Is Stirred And That Is A Deeper Place By Far. That Is The Place Of Response, Of Unifying One's Heart, Mind, Soul And Feet Around A Decision.

I Don't Hold To The Idea That God Causes Suffering And Crisis. I Just Know That Those Things Come Along And God Uses Them. We Think Life Should Be A Nice, Clean Ascending Line. But Inevitably Something Wanders Onto The Scene And Creates Havoc With The Nice Way We've Arranged Life To Fall In Place.

"why Is It Sports Is The Only Thing White People See Us Being Successful At? I Don't Want To Play Football," He Said. "i Wanna Be A Lawyer." "that's Fine With Me," I Said, A Little Annoyed. "i've Just Never Heard Of A Negro Lawyer, That's All. You've Got To Hear Of These Things Before You Can Imagine Them." "bullshit. You Gotta Imagine What's Never Been."

People In General Would Rather Die Than Forgive. It's That Hard. If God Said In Plain Language. "i'm Giving You A Choice, Forgive Or Die," A Lot Of People Would Go Ahead And Order Their Coffin.

It Was The In-between Time, Before Day Leaves And Night Comes, A Time I’ve Never Been Partial To Because Of The Sadness That Lingers In The Space Between Going And Coming.

I Didn't Know What To Think, But What I Felt Was Magnetic And So Big It Ached Like The Moon Had Entered My Chest And Filled It Up. The Only Think I Could Compare It To Was The Feeling I Got One Time When I Walked From The Peach Stand And Saw The Sun Spreading Across The Late Afternoon, Setting The Top Of The Orchard On Fire While Darkness Collected Underneath. Silence Had Hovered Over My Head, Beauty Multiplying In The Air, The Trees So Transparent I Felt Like I Could See Through To Something Pure Inside Them. My Chest Ached Then, Too, This Very Same Way.

There's A Gap Somehow Between Empathy And Activism. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Spoke Of 'soul Force' - Something That Emanates From A Deep Truth Inside Of Us And Empowers Us To Act. Once You Identify Your Inner Genius, You Will Be Able To Take Action, Whether It's Writing A Check Or Digging A Well.

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Alma Guillermoprieto

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