Quotes from Sue Monk Kidd

I knew a free black there who had a room, and he took her in. She said when the Guard stopped searching for her, she'd go back to the Grimkés and throw herself on their mercy." He'd been pacing, but now he sat down next to me and finished up the truth quick as he could. "One night she went out to the privy in Radcliff Alley and there was a white man there, a slave poacher named Robert Martin. He was waiting for her.

It occurs to me that perhaps the memories most likely to resonate do not fall happenstance into our lives. They are created.

Her silver button) reminding me of the destiny I always believed was inside of me, waiting. How can I explain such a thing? I simply know it - the way I know there's an oak tree inside an acorn. I've been filled with a hunger to grow this seed my whole life... That's why I was born for (abolition)... I've come to know it only this night, but it has always been the tree in the acorn...

The Matriarchs The Tales of Terror Phasaelis and Herod Antipas My Life in Nazareth Lamentations for Susanna Jesus, Beloved Yaltha

Is there an odyssey the female soul longs to make at the approach of fifty – one that has been blurred and lost within a culture awesomely alienated from soul? If so, what sort of journey would that be? Where would it take me?

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.

I would say, I loved her the way you love God, with all my heart and soul and might.

Brother Anthony leaned forward in his chair. "Contemplative waiting is consenting to be where we really are," he explained. "People recoil from it because they don't want to be present to themselves. Such waiting causes a deep existential loneliness to surface, a feeling of being disconnected from oneself and God. At the depths there is fear, fear of the dark chaos within ourselves.

If I'd been a thorn in Mother's side, Angelina would be the whole briar patch.

But even that didn't fully explain him. I knew of no one who put compassion above holiness. Our religion might preach love, but it was based on purity. God was holy and pure; therefore we must be holy and pure. But here was a poor mamzer saying God is love; therefore we must be love. I said, "You speak as if God's kingdom is not just a place on earth, but a place inside us." "So I believe.

parchment. Dearest Sister, I trust you received my earlier letter explaining why it was not safe for you to return. My mouth parted.

I wondered how it was possible I had found words out there in the world but could lose them in the house where I was born--Sarah Grimke

I remember thinking: We've come to the split in the river. I felt, whether or not it was true, that my life would be decided now. It would rush one way or go the other.

Do not stare at me in the shit pile, leaving me discarded You will find me in the kingdoms . . . Do not be afraid of my power Why do you despise my fear and curse my pride? I am she who exists in all fears and in trembling boldness

it? The danger to you in Galilee has not fully passed, though it has lessened. Antipas is fully consumed by his lust to be named King of the Jews by Rome. Last week we came into Judea on our

You come from your mauma, you sleep in the bed with her till you're near twenty years grown, and you still don't know what haunches in the dark corners of her.

lay beside him, drawing warmth from his body. We stared up at the branches, at clusters of yellow fruit, at the black sky smeared with stars. How awake we were, how alive. I pressed my ear to his chest and listened to the slow drumming. I thought us inseparable. A single timbre.

I slept with grief and woke to it. It was always there, a black strap around my heart.

where we will remain through Passover. Antipas has no rule here. Come to us with all haste. Sail with Lavi to Joppa and make your way to Bethany where we lodge at the home of Lazarus, Mary, and Martha. The kingdom is close at hand. Vast throngs of people in Galilee and Judea now hail Jesus as the Messiah. He believes

That's what I told myself five hundred times: impossibility. I can tell you this much: the world is a great big log on the fires of love.

For a moment I felt the quiet hungering thing that comes inside when you return to the place of your origins, and then the ache of mis-belonging. It was beautiful, this place, and it was savage. It swallowed you and made you a part of itself, or if you proved too inassimilable, it spit you out like the pit of a plum.

My heart is full," Yaltha told her. "So full it's difficult for me to speak.

every pain in this world wants to be witnessed

upon us and he wishes you by his side. He compelled me to tell you that he is safe. I, though, must warn of dangers. The people are emboldened by the appearance of a Messiah and there is much talk of revolution. Jesus teaches each day in the Temple and the Jewish authorities set spies upon us the moment we enter the gates.