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4021ab2
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People, in general, would rather die than forgive. It's hard. If God said in plain language, "I'm giving you a choice, forgive or die," a lot of people would go ahead and order their coffin."
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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e28166a
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I didn't know what to think, but what I felt was magnetic and so big it ached like the moon had entered my chest and filled it up. The only think I could compare it to was the feeling I got one time when I walked from the peach stand and saw the sun spreading across the late afternoon, setting the top of the orchard on fire while darkness collected underneath. Silence had hovered over my head, beauty multiplying in the air, the trees so tra..
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feelings
nature
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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a22ee2e
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How could I choose someone who would force me to give up my own small reach for meaning? I chose myself, and without consolation.
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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0e5ff32
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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."
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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3b5c536
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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.
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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541e8d8
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We write to taste life twice," Anais Nin wrote, "in the moment and in retrospection."
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Sue Monk Kidd & Ann Kidd Taylor |
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2b6b832
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Everybody needs a seashell in her bathroom to remind her the ocean is her home.
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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a8d36fd
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God fills us with all sorts of yearnings that go against the grain of the world--but the fact those yearnings often come to nothing, well, I doubt that's God's doing." She cut her eyes at me and smiled. "I think we know that's men's doing."
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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de3439e
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I realize what a strange in-between place I am in. The Young Woman inside has turned to go, but the Old Woman has not shown up.
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Sue Monk Kidd & Ann Kidd Taylor |
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0f72392
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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.
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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cb27d3a
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In writing The Invention of Wings, I was inspired by the words of Professor Julius Lester, which I kept propped on my desk: "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."
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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a92c05c
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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.
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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938e968
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Still everyone, including the abbot, had said that he was running away from his grief. They'd had no idea what they were talking about. He'd cradled his grief, almost to the point of loving it. For so long he refused to give it up, because leaving it behind was like leaving her.
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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4ab01f4
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There is a fullness of time for things. You have to know when to prod and when to be quiet. When to let things take their course.
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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b9cbe45
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The words were unexpected, but so incisively true. So much of prayer is like that - an encounter with a truth that has sunk to the bottom of the heart, that wants to be found, wants to be spoken, wants to be elevated into the realm of sacredness.
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prayer
meditation
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sue monk kidd |
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f088d62
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It takes a bee 10,000,000 trips to collect enough nectar to make 1 pound of honey.
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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24958dc
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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.
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spiritual
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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bfee1c5
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Standing there, I loved myself and I hated myself. That's what the black Mary did to me, made me feel my glory and my shame at the same time.
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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5e57d3c
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There's a frightful muteness that dwells at the center of all unspeakable things, and I had found my way into it.
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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8142425
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She didn't even know how dangerous the truth could be, all the tiny, shattering seeds it carried.
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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661ce5c
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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.
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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3f8a257
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The second thing I wrote down that day was that exclusive male imagery of the Divine not only instilled an imbalance within human consciousness, it legitimized patriarchal power in the culture at large. Here alone is enough reason to recover the Divine Feminine, for there is a real and undeniable connection between the repression of the feminine in our deity and the repression of women.
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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d4615d3
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Above all, send the bees love. Every little thing wants to be loved.
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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897be27
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I can't explain that, except to say there's release in knowing the truth no matter how anguishing it is. You come finally to the irreducible thing, and there's nothing left to do but pick it up and hold it. Then, at least, you can enter the severe mercy of acceptance.
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truth
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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a581f20
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Where had I been that I didn't know about imaginary friends? I could see the point of it. How a lost part of yourself steps out and remind you who you could be with a little work.
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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ecba495
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You've been halfway living your life for too long. May was saying that 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.
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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1333f99
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Shitbucket, hellfire, damnation, and son of a mother bitch," said Rosaleen, laying into each word like it was sweet potatoes on her tongue."
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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b072d1a
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I'd been wandering about in the enchantments of romance, afflicted with the worst female curse on earth, the need to mold myself to expectations.
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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0ca4ac8
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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..
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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cd97b4f
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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.
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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b00ec8a
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I didn't know how to be in the world without her.
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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26a459d
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Make the world better. Take the meanness out of people's hearts.
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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7793104
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The whole problem with people is...they know what matters, but they don't choose it.
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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6475503
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The core symbols we use for God represent what we take to be the highest good....These symbols or images shape our worldview, our ethical system, and our social practice--how we relate to one another. For instance, [Elizabeth A.] Johnson suggests that if a religion speaks about God as warrior, using militaristic language such as how "he crushes his enemies" and summoning people to become soldiers in God's army, then the people tend to becom..
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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1d756c9
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Let not your heart be troubled. Neither let it be afraid.
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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3d16c18
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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."
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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ab705dd
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You are my everlasting home. Don't you ever be afraid. I am enough. We are enough.
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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029c27d
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Into every life a little rain must fall.
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Sue Monk Kidd & Ann Kidd Taylor |
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008c7fc
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I marvel at how good I was before I met him, how I lived molded to the smallest space possible, my days the size of little beads that passed without passion through my fingers. So few people know what they're capable of. At forty-two I'd never done anything that took my own breath away, and I suppose now that was part of the problem - my chronic inability to astonish myself.
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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88f2dc3
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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.
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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51ceaca
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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.
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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9d6f83a
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With winter the feeling had deepened. I would see a neighbor running along the sidewalk in front of the house, training, I imagined, for a climb up Kilimanjaro. Or a friend at my book club giving a blow-by-blow of her bungee jump from a bridge in Australia. Or - and this was the worst of all - a TV show about some intrepid woman traveling alone in the blueness of Greece, and I'd be overcome by the little sparks that seemed to run beneath al..
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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a6a9d57
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Every living creature on the earth is special. You want to be the one that puts an end to one of them?
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morals
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Sue Monk Kidd |
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b8036d3
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I realize I'm trying to work out the boundaries. How to love her without interfering. How to step back and let her have her private world and yet still be an intimate part of it. When she talks about her feelings, I have to consciously tell myself she wants me to receive them, not fix them.
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Sue Monk Kidd |