Quotes from Sue Monk Kidd

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.

am the first and the last I am she who is honored and she who is mocked I am the whore and the holy woman I am the wife and the virgin I am the mother and the daughter I am she . . . Do not be afraid of my power . . . I am the knowledge of my name I am the name of the sound and the sound of the name THE THUNDER: PERFECT

I didn't go in hungry to turn back to God's law—I went desiring to cleanse myself of fear and deadness of spirit. I went repenting of my silence and of the meagerness of my hope. I went thinking of the newborn self I'd dreamed of birthing.

Don't be telling me--can't be done. That's some god damney white talk, that's what that is.

Jesus's capacity for mercy baffled me. I didn't know if I could give up the wrongs my father had done, the way I hauled them around like an ossuary of precious old bones. Jesus made it seem as if one could just lay them down.

They say in extreme moments time will slow, returning to its unmoving core, and standing there, it seemed as if everything stopped. Within the stillness, I felt the old, irrepressible ache to know what my point in the world might be. I felt the longing more solemnly than anything I'd ever felt, even more than my old innate loneliness.

It was something of a wonder to discover that the human Jesus has so many different faces and that people, even historical Jesus scholars, tend to view him through the lens of their own needs and proclivities. For some he's a political activist. For others, a miracle worker. He's viewed as rabbi, social prophet, religious reformer, wisdom teacher, nonviolent revolutionary, philosopher, feminist, apocalyptic preacher, and on and on.

I realized that the heart of religion was setting up an honest dialogue with the uniqueness of one's soul and finding a deeply personal relationship with God, the inner Voice, the inner Music that plays in you as it does in no one else.

each soul possessed a garden with a serpent that whispered temptations.

I had come to that irreducible thing, just as I had with my father, and there was nothing to do but accept, to learn to accept, to lie down every night and accept.

May this severing not cut us apart, but bind us together.

He sensed my fear, and wishing to break its spell, he said, "Consider the lilies of the field. They are not anxious, yet God takes care of them. How much more will he take care of you?

Your goodness will not be forgotten," I told him. "Not a single act of your love will be squandered. You've brought God's kingdom as you hoped—you've planted it in our hearts.

An idea suddenly sat in my head, sunning itself

If God were a wife, she would have acted sooner.

She had the look of someone who'd declared herself, and seeing it, my indignation collapsed and her mutinous bath turned into something else entirely. She'd immersed herself in forbidden privileges, yes, but mostly in the belief she was worthy of those privileges. What she'd done was not a revolt, it was a baptism.

There was an incongruous peace in my helplessness, in the knowledge that what was done was done and could not be undone, and even if I could change it, I wouldn't.

It almost bereaves me to think of unrealized potentials dying inside, the small miscarriages of self. I

It seemed like that's when she started laying her cold fire of hate.

Yaltha's words returned to me: You have your destiny, too. They stirred the old longings in me, the terrible need for my own life.

Forgiveness was so much harder than being remorseful. I couldn't imagine the terrible surrender it would take

Your moment will come, and when it does, you must seize it with all the bravery you can find. Your moment will come because you'll make it come.

It has been a day of suffering for you," he said, and the words opened a ravine of sadness in me. My eyes glazed, a sob creeping up the back of my throat.

I could make do with that misery and take my solace from the water.