Quotes from Sue Monk Kidd

the Russell slaves name Tom has his own blacksmith shop on East Bay. Missus Russell let him work for hire all day

The human soul needs a divine mother, a feminine aspect to balance out the masculinity of God, and yes, Mary had carried it off the best she could.

A man's holy of holies contains God's laws, but inside women there are only longings.

Judas means to have his revolution, Ana. If Jesus doesn't bring it about peaceably, Judas means to ignite it by force. The surest way to incite the masses is for the Romans to execute their Messiah.

Plus, there were the children to consider. They were, for me, the biggest concern of all...But what if I challenged the institution? Not setting the proper and accepted religious example for them conjured up images of the bad mother, the worst mother. Yet wouldn't the example of a mother being true to her journey, taking a stand against patriarchy, and questing for spiritual meaning and wholeness, even when it meant exiting the circles of orthodoxy, be a worthwhile example?

He waited actively—letting go, descending into the depths of his soul, listening, opening himself to change, praying.

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 MIND

I began to envision myself differently, to experience The Feminine not as wounded, but as something beautiful, exuberant, wise and unspeakably valuable.

Knock upon yourself as on a door, and walk upon yourself as on a straight road. For if you walk on that road, you cannot get lost, and what you open for yourself will open. GOSPEL OF THOMAS

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." ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My deepest thanks to . . .

Only women hearing each other can create a counterworld to the prevailing reality.

I'm left with nothing but this strange beating in my heart that tells me I'm meant to do something in this world.

We will teach you about our God and you will teach us about yours, and together we'll find the God that exists behind them

Every man is guilty of all the good he didn't do." Such

Life is arranged against us, Sarah. And it's brutally worse for Handful and her mother and sister. We're all yearning for a wedge of sky, aren't we? I suspect God plants these yearnings in us so we'll at least try and change the course of things. We must try, that's all.

I'd chosen the regret I could live with best, that's all. I'd chosen the life I belonged to. (Sarah Grimke's character)

I walked past the stable and carriage house. The path took me cross the whole map of the world I knew. I hadn't yet seen the spinning globe in the house that showed the rest of it. p7

can't explain this to myself. I only feel in intuitive, indeterminate ways that she will have a part in whatever renaissance might lie in my aging, perhaps opening me to the deeper

He smiled then, and I saw he had a one-sided dimple. It's a feature that has always gotten to me.

He'd cradled his grief almost to the point of loving it. For so long he'd refused to give it up, because leaving it behind was like leaving her. Sometimes he couldn't fathom why he'd thrown in his lot with these aging men.

more primal layers of creativity I yearn for, and at the same time, taking me down to an irreducible essence, all the way to the severity of my own dying. Down to the gnawed bone.

I began to glimpse the chasm that lay between the inclinations of my soul and my ability to carry them out. I had had a clear, pure moment of knowing that compelled me to risk my religion and move beyond patriarchy at church and within my spiritual life, but actually doing it? Now that was something else altogether...Yes, I was withering within these things. Internally I felt trapped.

I was gazing at a sea of waiting faces, and it occurred to me that after my tall, dazzling sister, I must've been a sight. Perhaps I was even a shock. I was short, middle-aged, and plain, with a tiny pair of spectacles on the end of my nose, and I still wore my old Quaker clothes. I was comfortable in them now. I'm who I am. The thought made me smile, and everywhere I looked, the women smiled back, and I imagined they understood what I was thinking.

He smiled then, and I saw he had a one-side dimple. It's a feature that has always gotten to me.