Sue Monk Kidd 4 again one more time
“Today (August 12) is my birthday. It makes me think of the new life I’m incubating and the Birth-day still to come.
I’ll say to myself. ‘You’re loved. Your pain is God’s pain. Go ahead and embrace the struggle and chaos of it all. The splendor, the messiness, the wonder, the agony, the joy, the conflict. Love all of it.’
I’ll say to myself. ‘Remember that little flame on the Easter candle. Cup your heart around it. Your darkness will become the light.’”
Sue Monk Kidd, When the Heart Waits, p. 171, incubating the darkness.
We continue our visit with Sue Monk Kidd.
I wish I could have Sue Monk Kidd’s book, When the Heart Waits, Spiritual Direction for Life’s Sacred Questions, with me all the time and just read from it when I meet with other spiritual friends. I hope I can remember her message about waiting. I hope to share her ideas about the false self at the appropriate time. I see many people coming for direction on or getting ready for the “night sea journey” of biblical waiters like Jonah in the belly of the whale, or like Christ in the tomb, or like Joseph in the well. I hope to remember Kidd’s phrase when we are having difficulty letting go, “Put on your courage suit” or the image of letting go like crossing a bridge.
I began this book on Maundy Thursday in the Chapel of Repose with the reserved sacrament. I am ending it in Greece with my husband, my daughter, and her husband in the week of Easter 4 as we overlook the Acropolis. I know Kidd’s later books are about her trips to Greece especially with her daughter where she becomes even more connected to the feminine part of herself and God. My daughter and I have just this month published a book together just as Kidd and her daughter did. Kidd ends this book telling about a drawing which came from her true inner self of a sketch she made at Kanuga, the home of my spiritual direction class, of a mother and child. So much serendipity.
This past Sunday, on Mother’s Day we dedicated a sculpture of mother and child that my husband had purchased in the garden next to St. Luke’s chapel. I will attach a picture of the sculpture. More connections.
So, this week as we travel in Greece I will try to follow Kidd’s direction and stay in the moment and feed my soul real food instead of junk food, and see what else might happen to help me see the God within each person I meet and in myself as I continue to study to become a spiritual director and friend.
The real food I am looking for is silence, laughter, solitude, taking care of my body, swimming, massage, deep encounters, prayer, writing, reading, Eucharist, gratitude, seeing serendipity, delight, compassion, living in the present, empathy (sharing pain), and a reverence for the earth, especially in this ancient part of the earth that I will visit on land and on sea this week.
Joanna joannaseibert.com