Quotes from Sue Monk Kidd

to men in Jewish and Christian Scriptures, women rarely have speaking parts, and they are not mentioned nearly as often. If they are referenced, they're often unnamed.

I will not forget what Jesus said to me when I finished my song. He said, 'Each of us must find a way to love the world. You have found yours.

I'm racked with longings. I'm selfish and willful and sometimes deceitful. I rebel. I'm easy to anger. I doubt the ways of God. I'm an outsider everywhere I go.

The most wounded thing in us always finds a way

Taking the bowl in his hands, he turned it as he read aloud, "Lord our God, hear my prayer, the prayer of my heart." Looking up, he held my gaze a moment before continuing. "Bless the largeness inside me, no matter how I fear it. Bless my reed pens and my inks. Bless the words I write. May they be beautiful in your sight. May they be visible to eyes not yet born. When I am dust, sing these words over my bones: she was a voice.

Jesus has proclaimed that he is a Messiah," he said, turning toward us. "He did it believing God will act, but it wasn't only a religious statement. It was a political one. That's what worries me most, Ana. Pilate knows the Jewish Messiah is meant to overthrow Rome—he will take it seriously.

This will sound ridiculous, I guess, but my life had started to feel so stagnant, like it was atrophied. Everything shrunk down to the roles I played. I had loved doing them, Dee, I really had, but they were drying up, and they weren't really me.

It's always a marvel when one's pain doesn't settle into bitterness, but brings forth kindness instead.

I'm sorry I thrust so much on you at once. I'm not known for subtlety. My delicate side wore away many years ago.

What both of you do is important," says Ann, holding my gaze, and I see she is moved by my outpouring. This telling of secret things.

There would be no grand absolution, only forgiveness meter out in these precious sips. I would well up from Hugh's heart in spoonfuls, and he would feed it to me. And it would be enough.

Ann, seeking her true self, her autonomy and voice, her place in the world; and me, looking for the sap of spring, the ability to conjure a new dream of myself and bring it forth. Ann

Sometimes I was so busy being tuned in to outside ideas, expectations, and demands, I failed to hear the unique music in my soul.

I knew that there was a largeness in you. I knew you possessed a generosity of abilities that comes only rarely into the world.

When someone tries to put you back into a box from which you've already escaped, you might recall a line from the Indian poet Mirabai. She said, "I have felt the swaying of the elephant's shoulders and now you want me to climb on a jackass? Try to be serious!

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

he'd set a perilous chain of events in motion:

In these last minutes, what did he most want to hear—that he'd been seen and heard in this world? That he'd accomplished what he'd set out to do? That he'd loved and been loved?

is new potential in search of ripening and I am ripening in search of new potential.

It's always a marvel when one's pain doesn't settle into bitterness, but brings forth kindness instead

A More Resourceful Reprimand.

Don't fear; the baby will live or it will not. We must let life be life." No assurance, no platitude, no promise of God's mercy. Just a stark reminder that death was part of life. She offered me nothing but a way to accept whatever came—Let life be life. There was a quiet relinquishment in the words.

We might stay here the rest of our lives with the sky slammed shut, but mauma had found the part of herself that refused to bow and scrape, and once you find that, you got trouble breathing on your neck.

That's how it turned out in the end, but in the first months after my return from California, we experienced doubt and tension. I woke every day to uncertainty about my marriage.