March 15, 2024 • 41 mins
Sue Monk Kidd’s journey into the core of her spiritual life began with a profound realization about attention. As she delves into a parable, she was struck by the idea that what we pay attention to ultimately shapes and defines us. This insight sparked a deep reflection on the pivotal role of attention in her spiritual path. In this episode, Eric and Sue discuss some of the themes of her latest novel, including how to tap into the longings of the heart. They also explore how these common themes from her work show up in our everyday lives.In this episode, you will be able to:
- Embrace the largeness within yourself and unlock your true potential for personal growth and fulfillment
- Understand the personal genius within everyone and discover how it can propel you towards success and happiness
- Overcome fear and harness the power of being seen and heard in a way that aligns with your authentic self
- Nurture creativity as a form of motherhood, fostering new ideas and inspiration to bring forth into the world
- Experience the transformative power of confronting pain, and learn how it can lead to profound healing and spiritual growth
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
What you pay attention to is what will either devour
you or save you. I think we become what we
pay attention too.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers
have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
think ring true. And yet for many of us, our
thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
(00:39):
have instead of what we do. We think things that
hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. We
(01:13):
hope you'll enjoy this episode from the archive. Thanks for
joining us. Our guest on this episode is Sue Monk Kidd,
who was raised in the small town of Sylvester, Georgia,
a place that deeply influenced the writing of her first novel,
The Secret Life of Bees. Her book When the Heart
Waits from nineteen ninety has become a touchstone on contemplative spirituality.
(01:34):
Sue serves on the Writer's Council for Poets and Writers
and is well known for her work in feminist theology.
Her new book is a novel called The Book of Longings.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Hi, Sue, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Thank you. It's nice to be here.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
It's a real pleasure to have you on.
Speaker 4 (01:49):
We're going to discuss your latest book, The Book of
Longings here in a couple moments. But let's start like
we always do, with the parable of the two wolves.
There's a grandmother who's talking with her granddaughter and she says,
in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
are always at battle. What is a good wolf, which
represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
(02:10):
other's a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and
hatred and fear. And the granddaughter stops and she thinks
about it for a second, and she looks up at
her grandmother and she says, well, grandmother, which one wins?
And the grandmother says, the one you feed. So I'd
like to start off by asking you what that parable
means to you in your life and in the work
that you do.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
The moment that I read that parable, I thought instantly
of what feels like to me the core of my
spiritual life. Once the Dhali Lama said that he could
sum up his in two words, which was kindness, or
maybe that's one word kindness, and I never I thought
that I was too complicated to do this, But I'm
(02:52):
going to try to sum mine up in two words,
and that is pay attention. So that said to me
this parable that what you pay attention to is what
will either devour you or save you. And I think
we become what we pay attention to. So it's a
(03:16):
very important aspect of how I approach my life, and
it's a constant practice. Really. So there's two wolves in
me too, and I certainly feel them pulling me two
ways about this, But I guess for me, it's all
about the focusing on the attention I give to this moment,
(03:36):
to this world, to my work, to my life, to
the lives around me, to the divine in everything I love.
Speaker 4 (03:43):
That I think that's a beautiful way to start off.
I do a course called Spiritual Habits, and attention is
the first principle.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
It's like the place it all starts.
Speaker 4 (03:53):
What am I paying attention to day to day, moment
to moment, So I'm right on board.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
With you there.
Speaker 4 (04:00):
Your latest book is called The Book of Longings, and
it's an incredible novel. It's about a woman named Anna
who is a very brave, ambitious, and creative woman in
the first century who becomes the wife of Jesus, and
I would say the book is about both of their
journeys to becoming who they were meant to be.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
And it is.
Speaker 4 (04:20):
Really a beautiful book, like all of your books, but
I really really enjoyed reading it.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Thank you very much. That's what an author likes to hear.
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (04:31):
And I hope that summary works for a very short,
short summary of the book. And I don't want to
give away any of the key parts of the book,
but I'm going to pull out certain aspects of it
that I think that we could talk about that align
with what we talk about here on the show. And
the first I'd like to talk about is and am
I saying her name right? Is it Anna? Or is
(04:51):
it Anna? How do you how in your mind? How
is it pronounced?
Speaker 1 (04:55):
In my mind? It is Anna. I think that's a
very Southern way of saying it. So I'll go with
either one on.
Speaker 4 (05:02):
A slightly off note, as I do with most guests.
I've been immersing myself in your work recently, and I
read the Book of Longings that I mentioned to you
that I also read your book When the Heartweights Spiritual
Direction for life's sacred questions. But my girlfriend and I
also listened to A Secret Life of Bees on our
long drive from Atlanta to Columbus, and she was so
(05:24):
struck by how that book brought her back to the
childhood her mother described. And her mother has Alzheimer's, so
there's a lot going on there. It was a really
emotional and beautiful book. So when you mentioned a Southern
way of saying it, it really brought that up in
me that we did do all that recently, and how
southern to her some of your work is and really
(05:46):
brings her back to an old South of her mother's childhood.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Yeah, that's nice to hear. Ye.
Speaker 4 (05:52):
This latest book, Anna has a prayer that she says
throughout the book. It's kind of her prayer and I'm
going to read it and I thought we could just
talk about it for a moment, and that prayer is
Lord our God, hear my prayer, the prayer of my heart,
bless the largeness inside of me, no matter how I
(06:12):
fear it.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
Where did that.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
Come from for you? And what's the meaning of it
for you in your life?
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Well?
Speaker 1 (06:19):
This largeness, this was Anna's way of describing something that
I thoroughly believe in for every person, and that is
a kind of particular genius that dwells in every person.
I think of this largeness as it can be our passion,
(06:42):
our deepest authentic voice. However we think of what our
largeness is, I think our mission is to try and
bring that forth in ourselves, for not just the fulfillment
of ourselves, but for the world around us. But I
do believe Anna is trying to talk about her own
(07:05):
particular genius here, and her genius is something she longs for,
which is to write the lost stories of women and
to have a voice in the world. Now, this resonates
with me because it's very similar to my own longings,
and Anna in many ways reflects a lot of myself.
(07:29):
I guess I long to write the stories of women,
I long to have a voice in the world, and
these things live in me. And I think this is
probably the largeness I was given. So when I first
decided I wanted to write fiction, I was in my forties,
(07:50):
and I remember I was in Greece on a trip
with my daughter and friends, and we went to this
little convent, Greek Orthodox convent, and the little Nune because
she was I say little, because she was four eleven
at least, and she said, we like our guests to
(08:11):
come and stand under this tree where there was an
icon of the version Mary sitting in the branches, and
to ask the prayer that is at the bottom of
their heart. Now you see how this sort of turned
up in my novel. When she said that, the first
thing that came to me was my prayer at the
(08:31):
bottom of my heart is I want to be a novelist.
I had not written fiction up until that point, but
I longed to, and so that's what I said. I
think for Anna, she looked deep into herself and came
up with this prayer. And I believe this is something
(08:53):
women long to do, to find that prayer in themselves
and that largeness their own genius.
Speaker 4 (09:00):
I love that blessed the largeness inside of me, no
matter how I fear it. And I think there's an
inverse to that. Sometimes we fear it because we worry
what it's going to look like if it shows up
into the outside world. You know, what is bringing this
largeness out of me going to mean to the life
around me? And then there's another way, and this is
(09:21):
I often hear this from a lot of listeners or
people who I coach, who also fear that it's not
really there.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Yes, there is a lot of fear around this. Just
believing that we have this aspect of ourselves something to
offer the world and to offer ourselves. It's sometimes hard
for people, so it requires just really listening and believing
and taking a leap somehow. Most of the fear has
(09:49):
to do with whether how this will be met in
the world around us. It rearranges not just your life,
but the lives of people around you who may not
wish to see your largeness because it is somehow inconvenient
for them. And I think there's a fear of just
being visible, of being audible in the world. I'm suddenly
(10:14):
thinking of one of my favorite poets. I like to
read poetry. I can't write it, but I love to
read it. It's my scriptures, I guess David White and
a line that he writes is let's see, revelation can
be terrible knowing you can never hide your voice again.
(10:37):
It is terrible in some way to think about and
being visible and being audible is a choice, and it's
part of the fear of the largeness.
Speaker 4 (10:48):
I suppose the other thing that I thought was so
beautiful that you mentioned there was really the love story
between Anna and Jesus, which is certainly going to be controversial,
but I don't want to focus on that aspect of it.
What is so beautiful is the way that they nurture
the largeness in each other. And as you said just
a moment ago, sometimes the largeness coming out of us
(11:12):
can be inconvenient for those around us. And it's a
beautiful story between the two of them because each of
their largeness is certainly inconvenient for the other at points,
and yet they nurture and bless it in each other.
It's a really beautiful thing.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
I wanted so much for this relationship to be a
great love story. I wanted them to model in a
way some of what's possible in a marriage. There is
a moment in a scene in the novel in which
they tell one another that they bless the largeness in
(11:49):
one another. And I think that is just a beautiful
thing in a relationship, whether it's a marriage or friendship
or whatever, to just bless the largeness in another person.
We need that not only from within ourselves, but it
helps us to believe in it if someone else can
(12:12):
see it and bless it. And yes, they do that
for one another, and it is inconvenient at times. Anna
particularly struggles to bring it forth, not because she has
any lack of believing it or even wanting to bring
it forth. It's about the culture. It's about the religious
(12:34):
dictates and limitations and just how the world is arranged
against women, and she has to work very hard to
do it. And even Jesus cannot overcome all of that
for her. And there is some conflict in their marriage
around this, which I think brings some humanity into it.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
I agree.
Speaker 4 (12:56):
And what I think is also interesting is if we
had flipped the story and we had been able to
perhaps be inside Jesus's head more, we might have seen
more of how it suffered and how it caused him
to suffer to be apart from her.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Yes, they did have long stretches of being a part,
as he was an itinan In my version, he's this
itinerant stonemason carpenter who has to find work outside of
Nazareth at times leading up to these years of his
public ministry. So I was really working in those years
(13:32):
that are unknown about him that we have no record,
and I was fascinated with the idea of what was
an eighteen year old Jesus like or a twenty two
year old Jesus And was he following the Jewish ethic
of being married or what was he like? So those questions,
(13:52):
the what if about that was what drove the story
for me, but mostly the what ifs about Anna, because
while Jess is a big character, it's her story thoroughly.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
That's right, that's right, It totally is.
Speaker 4 (14:05):
And the love between the two of them makes me
think of a Rilka quote in Letters to a Young
Poet where he's describing what mature love might look like
and he says love consists of this two solitudes that meet,
protect and greet each other. And I just love that,
and I just felt like that was kind of what
their love was. They protected the greatness in each other.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Yes, actually, that is one of my favorite quotes, and
it was a wedding gift to me from my husband.
He gave me, and this I will not tell you
how long ago it was, because it was just long ago.
He gave me a little box and inside of it
were three links of chain and he had that verse
(14:51):
from the poem inside of it written underneath the chain.
And I thought, oh boy, I've gotten chain as a
wedding gift. This is like, what is this? And he
said he's a was a psychotherapist. He's retired now, but
he said, well, the chains on each end, that's my
life and this is your life. But we're joined in
(15:12):
the middle by this common love and union, but we
each have our separate lives, our solitudes. And I have
kept that chain until I gave it to my daughter
on her wedding day and said, continue.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
That that is really beautiful. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (15:28):
Yeah, So I want to move on to talking a
little bit about a description in the Book of God
that I that I love. And this this is Anna speaking.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
She says.
Speaker 4 (15:40):
It reassured me suddenly to think of God not as
a person like ourselves, but as an essence that lived everywhere.
God could be love, as Jesus believed for me, he
would be I am who I am, the beings in
our midst and I just think that is so lovely
and so aligns with my idea of the divine as
(16:04):
being this essence that lives everywhere.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
Yes, well me too. There is an evolving concept of
God for Anna in this story, and certainly I have
done this throughout my life. My ideas about God have
changed and transformed, and I hope expanded and expanded. And
this is once again happening for Anna. And early in
(16:31):
the book when she meets Jesus, for I think it's
the second time they have this conversation, and Anna says
something like, why can't we free God? And that is
what's happening here. I think she's freeing herself from these
(16:52):
concepts of God that are narrow and limiting and very
and I say this very purposefully man made, and she's
allowing herself to reimagine God for herself. That's a very
mystical standpoint, actually very individuated kind of thing to do,
(17:15):
rather than to take an ecclesiastical approach. But God is
not a person, she says, because they can be so disappointing.
But I think of God like that as well. I
am who I am the being this in our midst.
God for me is both imminent in dwelling in this
(17:37):
world and in matter, but also transcendent. And yet I
have to recognize Eric that if we're going to relate
to a divine presence, we somehow need to personalize it,
and it's very hard to relate to a being this
in our midst. So I totally get that people want
(17:58):
to relate to imagery of the divine and it's a
way of connecting as long as we understand that there
is a God beyond our concept of God.
Speaker 4 (18:12):
Yeah, what you said there just brought up a whole
bunch of different ideas in my mind. One makes me
think of in Hinduism, they say there's sort of four
routes to God, and you know, one of the routes
is called jana yoga, which is more knowledge, but it's
more knowledge of what you just said, God is sort
of this unified field of being or this this.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
Ground of being.
Speaker 4 (18:39):
But then the next type is Bakhdi yoga, which is
love and it's really about, you know, for people who
need more of an image, and that's really what you know,
a lot of people think Hinduism is all these different gods.
But really all it is is those various gods appear
as a way of seeing and aspect of God that
(19:00):
we can visualize and grab on to. It's a facet
of the Godhead that's behind it all.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
Yes, And it's amazing to me as I was writing
this book, how our own lens that we look at
God through, or even at Jesus through now is so
dependent on just our own history, our own proclivities, our
own need. God becomes somehow what we need God to
(19:31):
be in some very anthropomorphic way. But God is beyond
all of our concepts, I think, in my humble estimation,
and that is what Anna is trying to say here.
For her, she is freeing God and it is the
(19:52):
ground of her being.
Speaker 4 (20:16):
So it had another point in the book, Mary, Jesus's
mother is talking about Jesus and she says he learned
well and his suffering didn't harden him. It's always a
marvel when one's pain doesn't settle into bitterness but brings
forth kindness instead. And I love that line and I
bring it up because one of the things that I
(20:37):
talk about on the show a lot, and it's one
of the questions I ask guests a lot is what
is it that causes some people to grow from difficulty
and to become more compassionate, beautiful, strong wise and other
people become bitter from it? And I was just kind
of curious. This line brought that right up for me.
(20:57):
Is suffering didn't harden him for kindness? What do you
think are the aspects that cause us to be able
to grow from difficulty and pain versus become embittered by it?
Speaker 1 (21:09):
What comes to me is the word vulnerable, of vulnerability,
it's very hard to take off all that armor, that
ego armor, I guess, and just be vulnerable to learn
from something to say, this happened, and I want to
grow from it. You know. In the Secret Life of Bees,
(21:32):
I had this character t Ray, who was the father
of my main character Lily, and he is the example
of the opposite. I mean, he became embittered right and
hardened by the circumstances that had happened to him of
his losing his wife, and it followed him all the
days of his life, and he grew harder and harder.
(21:54):
And your heart shrinks and shrinks, and then it's you know,
it becomes more difficult to kind of break out of that.
I guess the mystery is to allow ourselves.
Speaker 5 (22:06):
In the moment to just be broken by it, to
just be broken, and in that vulnerability to choose love compassion.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
And it requires a real relinquishment of a lot of
our ego to do that, I guess. But I see
that as what a large part of life is about,
is bringing the ego into some kind of relationship, subservient
relationship to one's divine self, that nature of oneself. So
(22:43):
it's a long and difficult journey though.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (22:47):
And I told you in the introduction that I also
read your book When the Heart Weights Spiritual Direction for
life's sacred Questions, and I said I would bring these
two books together. And here goes attempt number one, because
in that book you're describing having a conversation with your counselor,
and the counselor says, the pain won't kill you, but
running from it might. And I wonder if that's somewhat
(23:10):
of another way of saying what you just said.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
Well, that's interesting, Yes, it probably is. I do remember
that very well. That's a lesson that y Altha, my
character in the Book of Longings, also tells Lily you know,
she says it like this, Let life be life, and
(23:35):
terrible things are going to happen, and beautiful things are
going to happen. I think Frederick Beetner said it like that.
Terrible things will happen, beautiful things will happen, but don't
be afraid. Life will be life, and we just have
to have a radical acceptance of that and not run
from it, and just take it all in, the pain,
(23:58):
the beauty, the terror, all of it, live it, and
do our best to become more compassionate because of it.
Speaker 4 (24:07):
I was about to go right to those words from
her next going back to when the Heart weights, you
followed the line I just read with this idea that
avoiding pain, rather than having the discipline encourage to confront
it and live it through, only compounds suffering in the
long run. And when you mentioned your character Tray, not
(24:29):
only did the pain harden him, the suffering that he
endured in the long run was so vast because he
couldn't face his pain.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
That's right, and the suffering that will come out of
that will be vastly worse than just going through it.
At the moment, I think that healing, the path to
healing is right through the wound, so you just turn
and move through the wound and process it and move on.
(25:01):
There's a certain metabolizing that our soul. I have to
think of the soul as having its own little digestive system,
you know, and you have to metabolize and digest these
things that happen to us and move through our soul
and let it go, and then we're freed somehow.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (25:24):
I love that idea of the digestive system of the soul.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
That's great.
Speaker 4 (25:28):
Another line from When the Heart Waits is that we
haven't been willing to face the fact that while the
spiritual journey is joyous and full, it's also long and hard.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
It asks much yes, And that was part of that book,
was rediscovering for myself the contemplative nature of waiting in
the transformation. There's just this period of time that is required,
and who wants to sit still for all of this?
I mean, particularly today. I wrote that book thirty four
(26:00):
years ago, and I was talking about how fast paced
everything was and how busy we were, and oh, my
fax machines and all of this. Well, my grandson doesn't
even know what a fax machine is. We have so
moved beyond that, And I think the contemplative nature of
(26:22):
what we need now in order to transform is being lost.
To have time for the soul to digest, we have
to cultivate something like paying attention and moments in order
to actually do that. Wordsworth called them spots of time
(26:44):
in his poem The Prelude. We just need spots of
time where we can be a refuge from ourselves, from
those driven selves we are, and just be silent and still.
I really believe in that. Of course, there's some you know,
nascent monk in me, I guess, and there's my name
(27:06):
right there. I'm living up to it. But I need
that in my life, and it seems harder and harder
to come by. You feel like you're just besieged somehow.
So I saw When the Heart Waits as a rediscovery
of those kinds of moments that allowed me to be
and to transform.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
Yeah, you're right.
Speaker 4 (27:28):
And in that book you do mention, you know, you
refer to us as becoming quickaholics, you know, And again
that was thirty five years ago, and we were quickaholics then.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
I don't know what the word is for us now.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
Yeah, crazed maybe.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
Crazed, Yeah, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (27:44):
Another idea that comes up in the new book, the
Book of Longing, is this idea of mothering.
Speaker 3 (27:51):
What does it mean to be a mother?
Speaker 4 (27:53):
And Yautha, who is Anna's aunt, who we've already quoted
a couple of times as having some very wise things
to say, says to her at some point, Anna, I
don't doubt you should give yourself to motherhood. I only questioned,
is what you're meant to mother? Tell me more about that.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
Well, Anna is not one who wants to have actual
physical children. She just knows that this is not meant
for her. And so y'all opposes this question to her,
what is it you're meant to mother? And it's kind
of revelatory for Anna because she hadn't thought of it
(28:33):
like this. And now we're back to what we were
discussing before your largeness? Are we not meant to mother that?
That is, to incubate it, to nurture it, to bring
it forth, to labor for it, then to take it
into the world and stand by it. So this is
(28:56):
what I've tried to do with my writing, is to
mother it. And I think of it as a real
important well not maybe as important as my own two children,
but important in the generation of my soul to be
generative and to bring forth what I want to bring
(29:17):
forth in the world. So for me, that's like a
mothering of something else.
Speaker 4 (29:23):
Right, right, And I was struck by this idea of mothering.
I was also struck by how a lot of mothering
is waiting. You know, your book When the Heart Weights,
We've referenced a couple of times, and I was sort
of struck by how, you know, particularly in the process
we think of as giving birth right, the most of
(29:45):
the time that process is waiting.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
Yes, and again it's such a hard thing to do.
And I don't think sometimes women particularly might think of mothering,
say a creative work as motherhood. But I wanted to
plant that idea just that, remembering that we have this
(30:09):
inside of us, that is that we can grow from
within and bring forth without And this is not limited
just to women. I think men can mother too, what
is in them to bring forth? And I think of
the mothering aspect of God, and even the creative life
to me, has so much to do with darkness and
(30:32):
silence and growing something inside that is true and real,
and the labor and the waiting for it all so
I see just the creative part of life is very
like a dark Madonna.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
In when the heart weights.
Speaker 4 (31:20):
You say, we seem to have focused so much on
exuberant beginnings and victorious endings that we've forgotten about the slow,
sometimes torturous unraveling of God's grace that takes place in
the middle places.
Speaker 3 (31:33):
And I love that idea.
Speaker 4 (31:34):
Whether we're thinking of birth, you know, there's these exuberant
beginnings like I'm pregnant and victorious endings I just gave birth,
or in writing a novel, oh I've got the idea
is the exuberant beginning and the victorious ending is oh,
the book is published. But there's all this middle place
in both those which can be you know, as you said,
(31:55):
sometimes slow, sometimes torturous.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
Exactly, and that middle place, Wow, that's life. That's real life.
It's getting up every day and having the courage to
choose compassion or pay attention or write bravely. It's the work,
(32:19):
it's the sitting in the chair. It's just life itself.
And I think learning to love that again and to
value that and not see it as just a passing
time or trying to skip over it to get from
here to there, But that's where our life is, and
actually the creation happens in those moments that we're not
(32:43):
even totally aware of. It's just I come into my
study every morning and labor away and then okay, four
and a half years later, there's the book.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
Is that your routine, a daily writing routine.
Speaker 4 (32:59):
You go in and you spend the time working, regardless
of how it's going.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
Yes, I will have to say that after I finish
a book, I generally take some time away and let
my self be fallow for a while and give time
for some new creative idea to sprout or grow, because
the ground needs to sit a while for me. But yeah,
(33:26):
I come in every day, and I mean I'm here
for hours and hours. My husband will send the dog
in after me with the toy to play with, and
then I know, Okay, I've been in too long. But
I get lost in this realm and identify with my characters.
(33:46):
And I love the actual writing of the book more
than I like having written it. Frankly, I just like
the process.
Speaker 4 (33:56):
There's another part that you mentioned in When the Heart Waits,
and you say, this is an important principle in waiting,
coming to the enormous realization that there are seed forces
within us. The potential for wholeness life with a capital
L is fully here. We don't have to go out
in conquest and make it happen. We can simply let
(34:16):
it happen consciously. And so I think that both those
things are there. You're describing a process of showing up
every day to try and birth it, but also realizing
that there is something within us. And this is back
to the very early idea of Anna and the largeness
inside of her. That this process of bringing something to
(34:38):
be is both an active and a passive. Is the
wrong word because you describe waiting as not being passive,
but there's a more active and perhaps.
Speaker 3 (34:48):
A less active.
Speaker 4 (34:48):
That's not very articulate, but you get the idea of
where I'm going with this.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
Well, contemplation is both. It has an active part, and
I guess we would say, let's not use passive, then
let's say patients nice quiet still the being cultivating that
sense of just being. I tell you what I call
it sometimes loitering, and it's true. There is just something
(35:20):
very spiritual and deep about loitering well or loitering consciously.
And the real key for me in waiting or in
being still or patient, is doing it consciously, doing it
with attention and paying attention to what's the process inside
(35:43):
of us and what we're bringing forth and so forth.
So I have a strong desire sometimes to just go
out and do and do, and then I have to
return to this silent place and myself. My words matter
to me so much, I need silence beneath them in
(36:05):
order to have the best words that I have out there,
if that makes sense. They're grounded with silence. So there's
a poem by May Sartin, Boy, I am really quoting
poets today, So why I am doing that? But May
Sartan's talked about a poem called the Old Woman, and
(36:25):
she said, Old Woman, I meet you deep inside myself.
You are the silence beneath my words. And when I
heard that, I thought, we all need that kind of
silence beneath us to hold us. And that's the waiting.
Speaker 4 (36:42):
Do you try and take time aside for silence every day,
a meditative or a prayer practice or is it something
that you come to a little bit more organically.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
I used to do a very formal mindfulness meditation, and
I still do it from time to time, but in
a more as you said, organic way. I think of
it as a spirituality of naturalness. Maybe. I mean, I
want my spiritual life in my ordinary life to just
(37:16):
be integrated so that it all becomes a prayer. And
Thomas Merton the monk Trappis Monk was really important in
my formation, and he said, you know, the birds are
my prayer. The wind in the trees is my prayer
(37:37):
for God is all in all. I liked that idea
of just going about my ordinary day, doing my thing,
but paying attention and understanding that there's this spark in it.
So I guess it's not so formal anymore as it
used to be. But maybe one day I will be
(37:59):
able to have it all be a prayer.
Speaker 4 (38:01):
That's the goal, is the integration of that and that
ability to be more present as we go about our lives.
I mean, for me, that's the whole point of taking
time aside.
Speaker 3 (38:12):
To sit specifically, is so that.
Speaker 4 (38:17):
More of the moments of my day are imbued with
that stillness and that quiet. And the quote that you
just read by Merton reminded me of one of my
favorite quotes from an old zen master zen Master Dogan,
and he said, enlightenment is intimacy with all things, and
that is just resonates with a Merton quote.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (38:37):
So the last thing I'd like to ask you about.
Speaker 4 (38:39):
And we are near the end of our time, here
is another part from When the Heart Waits, because I
thought this was a really beautiful idea, and i'd like
you just to say a little bit more about it,
even though I'm asking you to quote or go back
to a book that you wrote thirty years ago. Sorry
about that, but I think you'll relate with this and
have something wise to say. You say, letting go isn't
(39:00):
one step, but many. It's a winding, spiraling process that
happens on deep levels, and we must begin at the
beginning by confronting or ambivalence.
Speaker 1 (39:11):
Yet, well, you hear my dog in the background too.
Speaker 3 (39:14):
Your dog is telling us the interview is over.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
My goodness, Yes, And first of all, I don't mind
it all talking about a book I wrote thirty four
years ago. Somehow that book has endured and it has
a kind of universality to it that I am so
glad people of now new generations are able to relate
(39:39):
to letting go. Yes, it is not a one time thing.
Is it. I find that life is like a spiral
and you just go round and round, but you're always
going in the right direction, hopefully. So it's that two
steps forward, one step backward kind of thing. And you know,
(40:02):
you go around and every time you make the loop,
you learn and you learn and you learn, and you
fall down a lot and you grasp again. I mean,
that's just part of life. I suppose, at least it
is for me, and I have to let go over
and over and over. But the miracle, the mystery is
(40:23):
that somehow, as you do this, it transforms you over
a period of time and the most subtle places inside
of us, so that you realize you have changed one day,
and it's not overnight. It's a long process.
Speaker 4 (40:41):
I think that's beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Well, Sue, thank you
so much for taking the time to come on. I
have really enjoyed this conversation.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
I have enjoyed it also, Eric, thank you, Yes.
Speaker 3 (40:53):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (41:10):
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What you pay attention to is what will either devour
you or save you. I think we become what we
pay attention too.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers
have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
think ring true. And yet for many of us, our
thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
(00:39):
have instead of what we do. We think things that
hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. We
(01:13):
hope you'll enjoy this episode from the archive. Thanks for
joining us. Our guest on this episode is Sue Monk Kidd,
who was raised in the small town of Sylvester, Georgia,
a place that deeply influenced the writing of her first novel,
The Secret Life of Bees. Her book When the Heart
Waits from nineteen ninety has become a touchstone on contemplative spirituality.
(01:34):
Sue serves on the Writer's Council for Poets and Writers
and is well known for her work in feminist theology.
Her new book is a novel called The Book of Longings.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Hi, Sue, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Thank you. It's nice to be here.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
It's a real pleasure to have you on.
Speaker 4 (01:49):
We're going to discuss your latest book, The Book of
Longings here in a couple moments. But let's start like
we always do, with the parable of the two wolves.
There's a grandmother who's talking with her granddaughter and she says,
in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
are always at battle. What is a good wolf, which
represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
(02:10):
other's a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and
hatred and fear. And the granddaughter stops and she thinks
about it for a second, and she looks up at
her grandmother and she says, well, grandmother, which one wins?
And the grandmother says, the one you feed. So I'd
like to start off by asking you what that parable
means to you in your life and in the work
that you do.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
The moment that I read that parable, I thought instantly
of what feels like to me the core of my
spiritual life. Once the Dhali Lama said that he could
sum up his in two words, which was kindness, or
maybe that's one word kindness, and I never I thought
that I was too complicated to do this, But I'm
(02:52):
going to try to sum mine up in two words,
and that is pay attention. So that said to me
this parable that what you pay attention to is what
will either devour you or save you. And I think
we become what we pay attention to. So it's a
(03:16):
very important aspect of how I approach my life, and
it's a constant practice. Really. So there's two wolves in
me too, and I certainly feel them pulling me two
ways about this, But I guess for me, it's all
about the focusing on the attention I give to this moment,
(03:36):
to this world, to my work, to my life, to
the lives around me, to the divine in everything I love.
Speaker 4 (03:43):
That I think that's a beautiful way to start off.
I do a course called Spiritual Habits, and attention is
the first principle.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
It's like the place it all starts.
Speaker 4 (03:53):
What am I paying attention to day to day, moment
to moment, So I'm right on board.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
With you there.
Speaker 4 (04:00):
Your latest book is called The Book of Longings, and
it's an incredible novel. It's about a woman named Anna
who is a very brave, ambitious, and creative woman in
the first century who becomes the wife of Jesus, and
I would say the book is about both of their
journeys to becoming who they were meant to be.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
And it is.
Speaker 4 (04:20):
Really a beautiful book, like all of your books, but
I really really enjoyed reading it.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Thank you very much. That's what an author likes to hear.
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (04:31):
And I hope that summary works for a very short,
short summary of the book. And I don't want to
give away any of the key parts of the book,
but I'm going to pull out certain aspects of it
that I think that we could talk about that align
with what we talk about here on the show. And
the first I'd like to talk about is and am
I saying her name right? Is it Anna? Or is
(04:51):
it Anna? How do you how in your mind? How
is it pronounced?
Speaker 1 (04:55):
In my mind? It is Anna. I think that's a
very Southern way of saying it. So I'll go with
either one on.
Speaker 4 (05:02):
A slightly off note, as I do with most guests.
I've been immersing myself in your work recently, and I
read the Book of Longings that I mentioned to you
that I also read your book When the Heartweights Spiritual
Direction for life's sacred questions. But my girlfriend and I
also listened to A Secret Life of Bees on our
long drive from Atlanta to Columbus, and she was so
(05:24):
struck by how that book brought her back to the
childhood her mother described. And her mother has Alzheimer's, so
there's a lot going on there. It was a really
emotional and beautiful book. So when you mentioned a Southern
way of saying it, it really brought that up in
me that we did do all that recently, and how
southern to her some of your work is and really
(05:46):
brings her back to an old South of her mother's childhood.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Yeah, that's nice to hear. Ye.
Speaker 4 (05:52):
This latest book, Anna has a prayer that she says
throughout the book. It's kind of her prayer and I'm
going to read it and I thought we could just
talk about it for a moment, and that prayer is
Lord our God, hear my prayer, the prayer of my heart,
bless the largeness inside of me, no matter how I
(06:12):
fear it.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
Where did that.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
Come from for you? And what's the meaning of it
for you in your life?
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Well?
Speaker 1 (06:19):
This largeness, this was Anna's way of describing something that
I thoroughly believe in for every person, and that is
a kind of particular genius that dwells in every person.
I think of this largeness as it can be our passion,
(06:42):
our deepest authentic voice. However we think of what our
largeness is, I think our mission is to try and
bring that forth in ourselves, for not just the fulfillment
of ourselves, but for the world around us. But I
do believe Anna is trying to talk about her own
(07:05):
particular genius here, and her genius is something she longs for,
which is to write the lost stories of women and
to have a voice in the world. Now, this resonates
with me because it's very similar to my own longings,
and Anna in many ways reflects a lot of myself.
(07:29):
I guess I long to write the stories of women,
I long to have a voice in the world, and
these things live in me. And I think this is
probably the largeness I was given. So when I first
decided I wanted to write fiction, I was in my forties,
(07:50):
and I remember I was in Greece on a trip
with my daughter and friends, and we went to this
little convent, Greek Orthodox convent, and the little Nune because
she was I say little, because she was four eleven
at least, and she said, we like our guests to
(08:11):
come and stand under this tree where there was an
icon of the version Mary sitting in the branches, and
to ask the prayer that is at the bottom of
their heart. Now you see how this sort of turned
up in my novel. When she said that, the first
thing that came to me was my prayer at the
(08:31):
bottom of my heart is I want to be a novelist.
I had not written fiction up until that point, but
I longed to, and so that's what I said. I
think for Anna, she looked deep into herself and came
up with this prayer. And I believe this is something
(08:53):
women long to do, to find that prayer in themselves
and that largeness their own genius.
Speaker 4 (09:00):
I love that blessed the largeness inside of me, no
matter how I fear it. And I think there's an
inverse to that. Sometimes we fear it because we worry
what it's going to look like if it shows up
into the outside world. You know, what is bringing this
largeness out of me going to mean to the life
around me? And then there's another way, and this is
(09:21):
I often hear this from a lot of listeners or
people who I coach, who also fear that it's not
really there.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Yes, there is a lot of fear around this. Just
believing that we have this aspect of ourselves something to
offer the world and to offer ourselves. It's sometimes hard
for people, so it requires just really listening and believing
and taking a leap somehow. Most of the fear has
(09:49):
to do with whether how this will be met in
the world around us. It rearranges not just your life,
but the lives of people around you who may not
wish to see your largeness because it is somehow inconvenient
for them. And I think there's a fear of just
being visible, of being audible in the world. I'm suddenly
(10:14):
thinking of one of my favorite poets. I like to
read poetry. I can't write it, but I love to
read it. It's my scriptures, I guess David White and
a line that he writes is let's see, revelation can
be terrible knowing you can never hide your voice again.
(10:37):
It is terrible in some way to think about and
being visible and being audible is a choice, and it's
part of the fear of the largeness.
Speaker 4 (10:48):
I suppose the other thing that I thought was so
beautiful that you mentioned there was really the love story
between Anna and Jesus, which is certainly going to be controversial,
but I don't want to focus on that aspect of it.
What is so beautiful is the way that they nurture
the largeness in each other. And as you said just
a moment ago, sometimes the largeness coming out of us
(11:12):
can be inconvenient for those around us. And it's a
beautiful story between the two of them because each of
their largeness is certainly inconvenient for the other at points,
and yet they nurture and bless it in each other.
It's a really beautiful thing.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
I wanted so much for this relationship to be a
great love story. I wanted them to model in a
way some of what's possible in a marriage. There is
a moment in a scene in the novel in which
they tell one another that they bless the largeness in
(11:49):
one another. And I think that is just a beautiful
thing in a relationship, whether it's a marriage or friendship
or whatever, to just bless the largeness in another person.
We need that not only from within ourselves, but it
helps us to believe in it if someone else can
(12:12):
see it and bless it. And yes, they do that
for one another, and it is inconvenient at times. Anna
particularly struggles to bring it forth, not because she has
any lack of believing it or even wanting to bring
it forth. It's about the culture. It's about the religious
(12:34):
dictates and limitations and just how the world is arranged
against women, and she has to work very hard to
do it. And even Jesus cannot overcome all of that
for her. And there is some conflict in their marriage
around this, which I think brings some humanity into it.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
I agree.
Speaker 4 (12:56):
And what I think is also interesting is if we
had flipped the story and we had been able to
perhaps be inside Jesus's head more, we might have seen
more of how it suffered and how it caused him
to suffer to be apart from her.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Yes, they did have long stretches of being a part,
as he was an itinan In my version, he's this
itinerant stonemason carpenter who has to find work outside of
Nazareth at times leading up to these years of his
public ministry. So I was really working in those years
(13:32):
that are unknown about him that we have no record,
and I was fascinated with the idea of what was
an eighteen year old Jesus like or a twenty two
year old Jesus And was he following the Jewish ethic
of being married or what was he like? So those questions,
(13:52):
the what if about that was what drove the story
for me, but mostly the what ifs about Anna, because
while Jess is a big character, it's her story thoroughly.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
That's right, that's right, It totally is.
Speaker 4 (14:05):
And the love between the two of them makes me
think of a Rilka quote in Letters to a Young
Poet where he's describing what mature love might look like
and he says love consists of this two solitudes that meet,
protect and greet each other. And I just love that,
and I just felt like that was kind of what
their love was. They protected the greatness in each other.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Yes, actually, that is one of my favorite quotes, and
it was a wedding gift to me from my husband.
He gave me, and this I will not tell you
how long ago it was, because it was just long ago.
He gave me a little box and inside of it
were three links of chain and he had that verse
(14:51):
from the poem inside of it written underneath the chain.
And I thought, oh boy, I've gotten chain as a
wedding gift. This is like, what is this? And he
said he's a was a psychotherapist. He's retired now, but
he said, well, the chains on each end, that's my
life and this is your life. But we're joined in
(15:12):
the middle by this common love and union, but we
each have our separate lives, our solitudes. And I have
kept that chain until I gave it to my daughter
on her wedding day and said, continue.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
That that is really beautiful. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (15:28):
Yeah, So I want to move on to talking a
little bit about a description in the Book of God
that I that I love. And this this is Anna speaking.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
She says.
Speaker 4 (15:40):
It reassured me suddenly to think of God not as
a person like ourselves, but as an essence that lived everywhere.
God could be love, as Jesus believed for me, he
would be I am who I am, the beings in
our midst and I just think that is so lovely
and so aligns with my idea of the divine as
(16:04):
being this essence that lives everywhere.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
Yes, well me too. There is an evolving concept of
God for Anna in this story, and certainly I have
done this throughout my life. My ideas about God have
changed and transformed, and I hope expanded and expanded. And
this is once again happening for Anna. And early in
(16:31):
the book when she meets Jesus, for I think it's
the second time they have this conversation, and Anna says
something like, why can't we free God? And that is
what's happening here. I think she's freeing herself from these
(16:52):
concepts of God that are narrow and limiting and very
and I say this very purposefully man made, and she's
allowing herself to reimagine God for herself. That's a very
mystical standpoint, actually very individuated kind of thing to do,
(17:15):
rather than to take an ecclesiastical approach. But God is
not a person, she says, because they can be so disappointing.
But I think of God like that as well. I
am who I am the being this in our midst.
God for me is both imminent in dwelling in this
(17:37):
world and in matter, but also transcendent. And yet I
have to recognize Eric that if we're going to relate
to a divine presence, we somehow need to personalize it,
and it's very hard to relate to a being this
in our midst. So I totally get that people want
(17:58):
to relate to imagery of the divine and it's a
way of connecting as long as we understand that there
is a God beyond our concept of God.
Speaker 4 (18:12):
Yeah, what you said there just brought up a whole
bunch of different ideas in my mind. One makes me
think of in Hinduism, they say there's sort of four
routes to God, and you know, one of the routes
is called jana yoga, which is more knowledge, but it's
more knowledge of what you just said, God is sort
of this unified field of being or this this.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
Ground of being.
Speaker 4 (18:39):
But then the next type is Bakhdi yoga, which is
love and it's really about, you know, for people who
need more of an image, and that's really what you know,
a lot of people think Hinduism is all these different gods.
But really all it is is those various gods appear
as a way of seeing and aspect of God that
(19:00):
we can visualize and grab on to. It's a facet
of the Godhead that's behind it all.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
Yes, And it's amazing to me as I was writing
this book, how our own lens that we look at
God through, or even at Jesus through now is so
dependent on just our own history, our own proclivities, our
own need. God becomes somehow what we need God to
(19:31):
be in some very anthropomorphic way. But God is beyond
all of our concepts, I think, in my humble estimation,
and that is what Anna is trying to say here.
For her, she is freeing God and it is the
(19:52):
ground of her being.
Speaker 4 (20:16):
So it had another point in the book, Mary, Jesus's
mother is talking about Jesus and she says he learned
well and his suffering didn't harden him. It's always a
marvel when one's pain doesn't settle into bitterness but brings
forth kindness instead. And I love that line and I
bring it up because one of the things that I
(20:37):
talk about on the show a lot, and it's one
of the questions I ask guests a lot is what
is it that causes some people to grow from difficulty
and to become more compassionate, beautiful, strong wise and other
people become bitter from it? And I was just kind
of curious. This line brought that right up for me.
(20:57):
Is suffering didn't harden him for kindness? What do you
think are the aspects that cause us to be able
to grow from difficulty and pain versus become embittered by it?
Speaker 1 (21:09):
What comes to me is the word vulnerable, of vulnerability,
it's very hard to take off all that armor, that
ego armor, I guess, and just be vulnerable to learn
from something to say, this happened, and I want to
grow from it. You know. In the Secret Life of Bees,
(21:32):
I had this character t Ray, who was the father
of my main character Lily, and he is the example
of the opposite. I mean, he became embittered right and
hardened by the circumstances that had happened to him of
his losing his wife, and it followed him all the
days of his life, and he grew harder and harder.
(21:54):
And your heart shrinks and shrinks, and then it's you know,
it becomes more difficult to kind of break out of that.
I guess the mystery is to allow ourselves.
Speaker 5 (22:06):
In the moment to just be broken by it, to
just be broken, and in that vulnerability to choose love compassion.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
And it requires a real relinquishment of a lot of
our ego to do that, I guess. But I see
that as what a large part of life is about,
is bringing the ego into some kind of relationship, subservient
relationship to one's divine self, that nature of oneself. So
(22:43):
it's a long and difficult journey though.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (22:47):
And I told you in the introduction that I also
read your book When the Heart Weights Spiritual Direction for
life's sacred Questions, and I said I would bring these
two books together. And here goes attempt number one, because
in that book you're describing having a conversation with your counselor,
and the counselor says, the pain won't kill you, but
running from it might. And I wonder if that's somewhat
(23:10):
of another way of saying what you just said.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
Well, that's interesting, Yes, it probably is. I do remember
that very well. That's a lesson that y Altha, my
character in the Book of Longings, also tells Lily you know,
she says it like this, Let life be life, and
(23:35):
terrible things are going to happen, and beautiful things are
going to happen. I think Frederick Beetner said it like that.
Terrible things will happen, beautiful things will happen, but don't
be afraid. Life will be life, and we just have
to have a radical acceptance of that and not run
from it, and just take it all in, the pain,
(23:58):
the beauty, the terror, all of it, live it, and
do our best to become more compassionate because of it.
Speaker 4 (24:07):
I was about to go right to those words from
her next going back to when the Heart weights, you
followed the line I just read with this idea that
avoiding pain, rather than having the discipline encourage to confront
it and live it through, only compounds suffering in the
long run. And when you mentioned your character Tray, not
(24:29):
only did the pain harden him, the suffering that he
endured in the long run was so vast because he
couldn't face his pain.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
That's right, and the suffering that will come out of
that will be vastly worse than just going through it.
At the moment, I think that healing, the path to
healing is right through the wound, so you just turn
and move through the wound and process it and move on.
(25:01):
There's a certain metabolizing that our soul. I have to
think of the soul as having its own little digestive system,
you know, and you have to metabolize and digest these
things that happen to us and move through our soul
and let it go, and then we're freed somehow.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (25:24):
I love that idea of the digestive system of the soul.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
That's great.
Speaker 4 (25:28):
Another line from When the Heart Waits is that we
haven't been willing to face the fact that while the
spiritual journey is joyous and full, it's also long and hard.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
It asks much yes, And that was part of that book,
was rediscovering for myself the contemplative nature of waiting in
the transformation. There's just this period of time that is required,
and who wants to sit still for all of this?
I mean, particularly today. I wrote that book thirty four
(26:00):
years ago, and I was talking about how fast paced
everything was and how busy we were, and oh, my
fax machines and all of this. Well, my grandson doesn't
even know what a fax machine is. We have so
moved beyond that, And I think the contemplative nature of
(26:22):
what we need now in order to transform is being lost.
To have time for the soul to digest, we have
to cultivate something like paying attention and moments in order
to actually do that. Wordsworth called them spots of time
(26:44):
in his poem The Prelude. We just need spots of
time where we can be a refuge from ourselves, from
those driven selves we are, and just be silent and still.
I really believe in that. Of course, there's some you know,
nascent monk in me, I guess, and there's my name
(27:06):
right there. I'm living up to it. But I need
that in my life, and it seems harder and harder
to come by. You feel like you're just besieged somehow.
So I saw When the Heart Waits as a rediscovery
of those kinds of moments that allowed me to be
and to transform.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
Yeah, you're right.
Speaker 4 (27:28):
And in that book you do mention, you know, you
refer to us as becoming quickaholics, you know, And again
that was thirty five years ago, and we were quickaholics then.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
I don't know what the word is for us now.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
Yeah, crazed maybe.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
Crazed, Yeah, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (27:44):
Another idea that comes up in the new book, the
Book of Longing, is this idea of mothering.
Speaker 3 (27:51):
What does it mean to be a mother?
Speaker 4 (27:53):
And Yautha, who is Anna's aunt, who we've already quoted
a couple of times as having some very wise things
to say, says to her at some point, Anna, I
don't doubt you should give yourself to motherhood. I only questioned,
is what you're meant to mother? Tell me more about that.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
Well, Anna is not one who wants to have actual
physical children. She just knows that this is not meant
for her. And so y'all opposes this question to her,
what is it you're meant to mother? And it's kind
of revelatory for Anna because she hadn't thought of it
(28:33):
like this. And now we're back to what we were
discussing before your largeness? Are we not meant to mother that?
That is, to incubate it, to nurture it, to bring
it forth, to labor for it, then to take it
into the world and stand by it. So this is
(28:56):
what I've tried to do with my writing, is to
mother it. And I think of it as a real
important well not maybe as important as my own two children,
but important in the generation of my soul to be
generative and to bring forth what I want to bring
(29:17):
forth in the world. So for me, that's like a
mothering of something else.
Speaker 4 (29:23):
Right, right, And I was struck by this idea of mothering.
I was also struck by how a lot of mothering
is waiting. You know, your book When the Heart Weights,
We've referenced a couple of times, and I was sort
of struck by how, you know, particularly in the process
we think of as giving birth right, the most of
(29:45):
the time that process is waiting.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
Yes, and again it's such a hard thing to do.
And I don't think sometimes women particularly might think of mothering,
say a creative work as motherhood. But I wanted to
plant that idea just that, remembering that we have this
(30:09):
inside of us, that is that we can grow from
within and bring forth without And this is not limited
just to women. I think men can mother too, what
is in them to bring forth? And I think of
the mothering aspect of God, and even the creative life
to me, has so much to do with darkness and
(30:32):
silence and growing something inside that is true and real,
and the labor and the waiting for it all so
I see just the creative part of life is very
like a dark Madonna.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
In when the heart weights.
Speaker 4 (31:20):
You say, we seem to have focused so much on
exuberant beginnings and victorious endings that we've forgotten about the slow,
sometimes torturous unraveling of God's grace that takes place in
the middle places.
Speaker 3 (31:33):
And I love that idea.
Speaker 4 (31:34):
Whether we're thinking of birth, you know, there's these exuberant
beginnings like I'm pregnant and victorious endings I just gave birth,
or in writing a novel, oh I've got the idea
is the exuberant beginning and the victorious ending is oh,
the book is published. But there's all this middle place
in both those which can be you know, as you said,
(31:55):
sometimes slow, sometimes torturous.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
Exactly, and that middle place, Wow, that's life. That's real life.
It's getting up every day and having the courage to
choose compassion or pay attention or write bravely. It's the work,
(32:19):
it's the sitting in the chair. It's just life itself.
And I think learning to love that again and to
value that and not see it as just a passing
time or trying to skip over it to get from
here to there, But that's where our life is, and
actually the creation happens in those moments that we're not
(32:43):
even totally aware of. It's just I come into my
study every morning and labor away and then okay, four
and a half years later, there's the book.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
Is that your routine, a daily writing routine.
Speaker 4 (32:59):
You go in and you spend the time working, regardless
of how it's going.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
Yes, I will have to say that after I finish
a book, I generally take some time away and let
my self be fallow for a while and give time
for some new creative idea to sprout or grow, because
the ground needs to sit a while for me. But yeah,
(33:26):
I come in every day, and I mean I'm here
for hours and hours. My husband will send the dog
in after me with the toy to play with, and
then I know, Okay, I've been in too long. But
I get lost in this realm and identify with my characters.
(33:46):
And I love the actual writing of the book more
than I like having written it. Frankly, I just like
the process.
Speaker 4 (33:56):
There's another part that you mentioned in When the Heart Waits,
and you say, this is an important principle in waiting,
coming to the enormous realization that there are seed forces
within us. The potential for wholeness life with a capital
L is fully here. We don't have to go out
in conquest and make it happen. We can simply let
(34:16):
it happen consciously. And so I think that both those
things are there. You're describing a process of showing up
every day to try and birth it, but also realizing
that there is something within us. And this is back
to the very early idea of Anna and the largeness
inside of her. That this process of bringing something to
(34:38):
be is both an active and a passive. Is the
wrong word because you describe waiting as not being passive,
but there's a more active and perhaps.
Speaker 3 (34:48):
A less active.
Speaker 4 (34:48):
That's not very articulate, but you get the idea of
where I'm going with this.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
Well, contemplation is both. It has an active part, and
I guess we would say, let's not use passive, then
let's say patients nice quiet still the being cultivating that
sense of just being. I tell you what I call
it sometimes loitering, and it's true. There is just something
(35:20):
very spiritual and deep about loitering well or loitering consciously.
And the real key for me in waiting or in
being still or patient, is doing it consciously, doing it
with attention and paying attention to what's the process inside
(35:43):
of us and what we're bringing forth and so forth.
So I have a strong desire sometimes to just go
out and do and do, and then I have to
return to this silent place and myself. My words matter
to me so much, I need silence beneath them in
(36:05):
order to have the best words that I have out there,
if that makes sense. They're grounded with silence. So there's
a poem by May Sartin, Boy, I am really quoting
poets today, So why I am doing that? But May
Sartan's talked about a poem called the Old Woman, and
(36:25):
she said, Old Woman, I meet you deep inside myself.
You are the silence beneath my words. And when I
heard that, I thought, we all need that kind of
silence beneath us to hold us. And that's the waiting.
Speaker 4 (36:42):
Do you try and take time aside for silence every day,
a meditative or a prayer practice or is it something
that you come to a little bit more organically.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
I used to do a very formal mindfulness meditation, and
I still do it from time to time, but in
a more as you said, organic way. I think of
it as a spirituality of naturalness. Maybe. I mean, I
want my spiritual life in my ordinary life to just
(37:16):
be integrated so that it all becomes a prayer. And
Thomas Merton the monk Trappis Monk was really important in
my formation, and he said, you know, the birds are
my prayer. The wind in the trees is my prayer
(37:37):
for God is all in all. I liked that idea
of just going about my ordinary day, doing my thing,
but paying attention and understanding that there's this spark in it.
So I guess it's not so formal anymore as it
used to be. But maybe one day I will be
(37:59):
able to have it all be a prayer.
Speaker 4 (38:01):
That's the goal, is the integration of that and that
ability to be more present as we go about our lives.
I mean, for me, that's the whole point of taking
time aside.
Speaker 3 (38:12):
To sit specifically, is so that.
Speaker 4 (38:17):
More of the moments of my day are imbued with
that stillness and that quiet. And the quote that you
just read by Merton reminded me of one of my
favorite quotes from an old zen master zen Master Dogan,
and he said, enlightenment is intimacy with all things, and
that is just resonates with a Merton quote.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (38:37):
So the last thing I'd like to ask you about.
Speaker 4 (38:39):
And we are near the end of our time, here
is another part from When the Heart Waits, because I
thought this was a really beautiful idea, and i'd like
you just to say a little bit more about it,
even though I'm asking you to quote or go back
to a book that you wrote thirty years ago. Sorry
about that, but I think you'll relate with this and
have something wise to say. You say, letting go isn't
(39:00):
one step, but many. It's a winding, spiraling process that
happens on deep levels, and we must begin at the
beginning by confronting or ambivalence.
Speaker 1 (39:11):
Yet, well, you hear my dog in the background too.
Speaker 3 (39:14):
Your dog is telling us the interview is over.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
My goodness, Yes, And first of all, I don't mind
it all talking about a book I wrote thirty four
years ago. Somehow that book has endured and it has
a kind of universality to it that I am so
glad people of now new generations are able to relate
(39:39):
to letting go. Yes, it is not a one time thing.
Is it. I find that life is like a spiral
and you just go round and round, but you're always
going in the right direction, hopefully. So it's that two
steps forward, one step backward kind of thing. And you know,
(40:02):
you go around and every time you make the loop,
you learn and you learn and you learn, and you
fall down a lot and you grasp again. I mean,
that's just part of life. I suppose, at least it
is for me, and I have to let go over
and over and over. But the miracle, the mystery is
(40:23):
that somehow, as you do this, it transforms you over
a period of time and the most subtle places inside
of us, so that you realize you have changed one day,
and it's not overnight. It's a long process.
Speaker 4 (40:41):
I think that's beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Well, Sue, thank you
so much for taking the time to come on. I
have really enjoyed this conversation.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
I have enjoyed it also, Eric, thank you, Yes.
Speaker 3 (40:53):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (41:10):
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