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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.

-Sue Monk Kidd

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I Often Went To

Sue Monk Kidd

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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.

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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.

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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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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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.

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Regrets Don't Help Anything.

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

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.

What Matters Is Giving Over To What You Love.

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

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?

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.

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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.

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

The Hardest Thing On Earth Is Choosing What Matters.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

So Few People Know What They're Capable Of.

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

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Nobody Should Go Through Life Without Falling In Love.

Falling In Love

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.

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 Become What We Pay Attention To.

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 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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

Did You Know There Are Thirty-two Names For Love In One Of The Eskimo Languages?" August Said. "and We Just Have This One. We Are So Limited, You Have To Use The Same Word.

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

Until We Look From The Bottom Up We Have Nothing.

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.

At Night I Would Lie In Bed And Watch The Show, How Bees Squeezed Through The Cracks Of My Bedroom Wall And Flew Circles Around The Room, Making That Propeller Sound, A High-pitched Zzzzzz That Hummed Along My Skin. I Watched Their Wings Shining Like Bits Of Chrome In The Dark And Felt The Longing Build In My Chest. The Way Those Bees Flew, Not Even Looking For A Flower, Just Flying For The Feel Of The Wind, Split My Heart Down Its Seam.

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.

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.

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.

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'.)

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

There Is Nothing Perfect...only Life.

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.

I Think There Must Be A Place Inside Of Us Where Dreams Go And Wait Their Turn.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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."

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

Sooner Or Later

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.

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

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

And When You Get Down To It, Lily, That Is The Only Purpose Grand Enough For A Human Life. Not Just To Love But To Persist In Love.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Sunset Is The Saddest Light There Is.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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 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.

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

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 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.

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