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1e4f241
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Their laughter would ring out abruptly, a sound Mother welcomed. "Our slaves are happy," she would boast. It never occurred to her their gaiety wasn't contentment, but survival."
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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c3ff063
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We lived for honey. We swallowed a spoonful in the morning to wake us up and one at night to put us to sleep. We took it with every meal to calm the mind, give us stamina, and prevent fatal disease. We swabbed ourselves in it to disinfect cuts or heal chapped lips. It went in our baths, our skin cream, our raspberry tea and biscuits. Nothing was safe from honey...honey was the ambrosia of the gods and the shampoo of the goddesses.
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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3a44b0d
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I'd chosen the regret I could live with best, that's all. I'd chosen the life I belonged to.
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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a6d8b83
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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.
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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2c2c0db
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I've tried to shield myself from life and inhabit my own small, safe corner; but there's no immunity from life.
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Ann Kidd Taylor Sue Monk Kidd |
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ae6ff1d
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How often do we do that, he wondered--look at someone and fail to see what's really there?
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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c8df491
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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.
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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c407cb8
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I don't remember what they said, only the fury of their words, how the air turned raw and full of welts. Later it would remind me of birds trapped inside a closed room, flinging themselves against the windows and the walls, against each other.
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words
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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01cf40c
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There was a time in Africa the people could fly. Mauma told me this one night when I was ten years old. She said, "Handful, your granny-mauma saw it for herself. She say they flew over trees and clouds. She say they flew like blackbirds. When we came here, we left that magic behind."
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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603504d
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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.
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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eb0c226
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How do we accomplish this matter of gathering life together in God? We must begin primarily by refocusing our attention keeping our minds and hearts directed toward God. The essence of the centered life is attention to God in all we think, say and do. It is the growing realization of His presence in our most down-to-earth living.
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god
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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e0ba416
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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.
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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89c704a
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Soul. The word rebounded to me, and I wondered, as I often had, what it was exactly. People talked about it all the time, but did anybody actually know? Sometimes I'd pictured it like a pilot light burning inside a person--a drop of fire from the invisible inferno people called God. Or a squashy substance, like a piece of clay or dental mold, which collected the sum of a person's experiences--a million indentations of happiness, desperation..
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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18c5bbb
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It has come as a great revelation to me," I wrote her, "that abolition is different from the desire for racial equality. Color prejudice is at the bottom of everything. If it's not fixed, the plight of the Negro will continue long after abolition."
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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3d545ad
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She liked to tell everyone that women make the best beekeepers, 'cause they have a special ability built into them to love creatures that sting.
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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9f7a2ef
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Do not fear to lose what needs to be lost.
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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10cbe63
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You think you want to know something, and then once you do, all you can think about is erasing it from your mind. From now on when people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I planned to say, .
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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bffde8a
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Probably one or two moments in your whole life you will hear a dark whispering spirit, a voice coming from the center of things. It will have blades for lips and will not stop until it speaks the one secret thing at the heart of it all. Kneeling on the floor, unable to stop shuddering, I heard it plainly. It said, You are unlovable...
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truth
shame
secrets
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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368106d
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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.
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god
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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0c05e88
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Journal became a sanctuary where I could pour out in honesty my pain and joy. It recorded my footsteps and helped me understand where I was standing, where I had been, and even where God pointed.
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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0ab872c
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How can you ask us to go back to our parlors?" I said, rising to my feet. "To turn our backs on ourselves and on our own sex? We don't wish the movement to split, of course we don't--it saddens me to think of it--but we can do little for the slave as long as we're under the feet of men. Do what you have to do, censure us, withdraw your support, we'll press on anyway. Now, sirs, kindly take your feet off our necks."
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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f2175a4
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I longed for it in that excruciating way one has of romanticizing the life she didn't choose.
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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12ebdbf
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He'd gone to church for forty years and was only getting worse. It seemed like this should tell God something.
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god
humor
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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5815e11
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women make 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.
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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1128369
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T. Ray said 'Who do you think you are? Julias Shakespeare?' The man sincerely thought that was Shakespeare's first name, and if you think I should have corrected him, you are ignorant about the art of survival.
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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6ac2097
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The month of August had turned into a griddle where the days just lay there and sizzled.
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heat
weather
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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6465cae
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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."
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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743bc9a
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People say love gets fouled by a difference big as ours. I didn't know for sure whether Miss Sarah's feelings came from love or guilt. I didn't know whether mine came from love or a need to be safe. She loved me and pitied me. And I loved her and used her. It never was a simple thing. That day, our hearts were pure as they ever would get.
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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42d408d
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Did you know there are 32 names for love in one of the Eskimo language? And we just have this one. We are so limited, you have to use the same word for loving Rosaleen as you do for loving Coke with peanuts. Isn't that a shame we don't have more ways to say it.
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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34b8391
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We are surrounded on all sides by God but often we are no more conscious of him than we are of air pressing against us. We don't turn our attention to Him. (Evelyn Underhill)
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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78bb4d4
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I could even feel how perishable all my moments really were, how all my life they had come to me begging to be lived, to be cherished even.
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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2a8c02a
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Everything she knew came from living on the scarce side of mercy.
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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f834b2e
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Every person on the face of the earth makes mistakes, Lily. Every last one. We're all so human. Your mother made a terrible mistake, but she tried to fix it.' 'Good night,' I said, and rolled onto my side. 'There is nothing perfect,' August said from the doorway. 'There is only life.
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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c173b2d
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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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Sue Monk Kidd |
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a5333d4
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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."
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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fbf82a4
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impossibility. I can tell you this much: the word is a great big log thrown on the fires of love.
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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bae980d
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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.
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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a4b21fe
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In recent years my understanding of God had evolved into increasingly remote abstractions. I'd come to think of God in terms like Divine Reality, the Absolute, or the One who holds us in being. I do believe that God is beyond any form and image, but it has grown clear to me that I need an image in order to relate. I need an image in order to carry on an intimate conversation with what is so vast, amorphous, mysterious, and holy that it beco..
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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6bbb290
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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.
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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5ea28d9
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I now understand that writing fiction was a seed planted in my soul, though I would not be ready to grow that seed for a long time.
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writing
novels
novelists
writers
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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d21010a
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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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Sue Monk Kidd |
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b60e36d
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I missed Rosaleen's snoring the way you'd miss the sound of the ocean waves after you've gotten used to sleeping with them. I didn't realize how it had comforted me. Quiteness has a strange, spongy hum that can nearly break your eardrums.
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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420b11e
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Being in love and getting married, now, that's two different things. I was in love once, of course I was. Nobody should go through life without falling in love. But didn't you love him enough to marry him? I loved him enough, I just loved my freedom more.
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sue monk kidd |
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71eeaab
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Every little thing wants to be loved.
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Sue Monk Kidd |