Quotes from Sue Monk Kidd

Spiritual whittling is an encounter with Mystery, waiting, the silence of inner places—all those things most folks no longer have time for.

For nearly two years, I'd worn my grief for Jesus like a second skin. In all that time, the pain of his absence had not diminished. The familiar burning came to my eyes, followed by that sense I often got of wandering inside my heart, desperately searching for what I could never find—my husband. I feared my grief would turn to despair, that it would become a skin I couldn't shed.

I've had intimations of this feeling of loss before, but it was a shadow passing in the peripheries, then gone. After Ann left home, I would wander into her room and catch the scent of dried prom corsages in the closet

and I would feel it, the momentary eclipse. I tell myself it's natural for the feeling to surface now, with the two of

The vision was a promise, was it not, that the light in me would not be extinguished. The largeness in me would not shrink away. I would yet become visible in this world.

I believe that a healthy sharing of oneself is a holy call, but so is caring for ourselves and taking time for the beautiful mysteries God created within us. The important thing is balance. Being a martyr distorts the virtuous ideal of giving to others by crossing over into victim postures and a self-denial that squelches selfhood and the creative life of the soul.

us captive in each other's presence, brought together in a way we haven't experienced in . . . well, forever.

time to assert one's right is when it's denied!" "I'm sorry

daughter is a woman who remains internally dependent, who does not shape her identity and direction as a woman, but tends to accept the identity and direction projected onto her.

struggling to compress the vastness of what I felt into words.

In Christian language, this is plain, old-fashioned surrender—giving up our conscious will and striving, and yielding instead to the inner kingdom. The soul-work involved in this internal restructuring is, I believe, the deepest meaning of spiritual becoming.

I ain't sorry for stealing it, just for getting caught." "How come you took it?" "Cause," she said. "Cause I could." Those words stuck with me. Mauma didn't want that cloth, she just wanted to make some trouble. She couldn't get free and she couldn't pop missus on the back of her head with a cane, but she could take her silk. You do your rebellions any way you can.

I suspected, though, she was simply mean.

rudeness is a misdemeanor in Charleston.

The words I wrote would not be read by unborn eyes. I would become the forgotten wife of a horrid little man lusting for a son.

All right, all right. There's a copy of Plato's Symposium there. In it he wrote that his old mentor Socrates was taught philosophy by a woman. Her name was Diotima.

must have looked forsaken standing there because she clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth and said, "Poor Miss Sarah." I did so despise the attachment of Poor to my name. Binah had been muttering Poor Miss Sarah like an incantation since I was four.

you don't know where you're going, you should know where you came from.

Then, on the roof, as close to the sky as I could get, I danced. My body was a reed pen. It spoke the words I couldn't write: I dance not for men to choose me. Not for God. I dance for Sophia. I dance for myself.

My prescription," he said, "is that you take him to Long Branch for the summer. It's a small, rather isolated place on the New Jersey shore known for its sea cure. I'll send you with laudanum and paregoric. He should be outside as much as possible. Encourage him to wade in the ocean, if he's able. By fall, perhaps he'll be recovered enough to travel home.

Life will be life and death will be death

He heard the quake that lived at my center, and he didn't seek to silence it.

There are sad truths in our world, and one is that slaves who read are a threat. They would be abreast of news that would incite them in ways we could not control. Yes, it's unfair to deprive them, but there's a greater good here that must be protected.

A shiver ran through me. Leave your cage. It had been a month and a half since the sickness had first appeared in the city.