Speaker 1: What you pay attention to is what will either devour
Speaker 1: you or save you. I think we become what we
Speaker 1: pay attention to. Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time,
Speaker 1: great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have.
Speaker 1: Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 1: you think ring true. And yet for many of us,
Speaker 1: our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 1: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Sue
Speaker 1: monk Kid, who was raised in the small town of Sylvester, Georgia,
Speaker 1: a place the deeply influenced the writing of her first novel,
Speaker 1: The Secret Life of Bees. Her book, When the Heart
Speaker 1: Waits From has become a touchstone on contemplative spirituality. Sue
Speaker 1: serves on the writer's Council for Poets and Writers and
Speaker 1: is well known for her work in feminist theology. Her
Speaker 1: new book is a novel called The Book of Longings.
Speaker 1: It's Sue, welcome to the show. Thank you, it's nice
Speaker 1: to be here. It's a real pleasure to have you on.
Speaker 1: We're going to discuss your latest book, The Book of
Speaker 1: Longings here in a couple of moments. But let's start
Speaker 1: like we always do, with the parable of the two Wolves.
Speaker 1: There's a grandmother who's talking with her granddaughter and she says,
Speaker 1: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 1: are always at battle. What is a good wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 1: other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
Speaker 1: and hatred and fear. And the granddaughter stops and she
Speaker 1: thinks about it for a second. She looks up at
Speaker 1: her grandmother and she said, well, grandmother, which one wins?
Speaker 1: And the grandmother says, the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 1: like to start off by asking you what that parable
Speaker 1: means to you in your life and in the work
Speaker 1: that you do. The moment that I read that parable,
Speaker 1: I thought instantly of what feels like to me The
Speaker 1: core of my spiritual life. Once the dolly Llama said
Speaker 1: that he could sum up his intwo words, which was kindness,
Speaker 1: or maybe that's one word kindness, And I never I
Speaker 1: thought that I was too complicated to do this, But
Speaker 1: I'm going to try to sum mine up in two words,
Speaker 1: and that is pay attention. So that said to me,
Speaker 1: this parable that you pay attention to is what will
Speaker 1: either devour you or save you. And I think we've
Speaker 1: become what we pay attention to. So it's a very
Speaker 1: important aspect of how I approach my life. And it's
Speaker 1: a constant practice. Really. So there's two wolves in me too,
Speaker 1: and I certainly feel them pulling me two ways about this.
Speaker 1: But I guess for me, it's all about the focusing
Speaker 1: on the attention I give to this moment, to this world,
Speaker 1: to my work, to my life, to the lives around me,
Speaker 1: to the divine in everything I love. That I think
Speaker 1: that's a beautiful way to start off. I do a
Speaker 1: course called Spiritual Habits, and attention is the first principle.
Speaker 1: It's like the place it all starts. What am I
Speaker 1: paying attention to day to day, moment to moment. So
Speaker 1: I I'm right on board with you there. Your latest
Speaker 1: book is called The Book of Longings, and it's an
Speaker 1: incredible novel. It's about a woman name Anna, who is
Speaker 1: a very brave, ambitious, and creative woman in the first
Speaker 1: century who becomes the wife of Jesus and and I
Speaker 1: would say the book is about both of their journeys
Speaker 1: to becoming who they were meant to be. And it
Speaker 1: is really a beautiful book, like like all of your books.
Speaker 1: But I really really enjoyed reading it. Thank you very much.
Speaker 1: That's what an author likes to hear. Thank you, ye.
Speaker 1: And I hope that summary works for a very short,
Speaker 1: short summary of the book. And I don't want to
Speaker 1: give away any of the key parts of the book,
Speaker 1: but I'm going to pull out certain aspects of it
Speaker 1: that I think that we could talk about that that
Speaker 1: align with what we talk about here on the show.
Speaker 1: And and the first I'd like to talk about is
Speaker 1: and am I saying her name right? Is it Anna?
Speaker 1: Or is it Anna? How do you how? In your mind?
Speaker 1: How is it pronounced? In my mind? It's Anna. I
Speaker 1: think that's a very Southern way of saying it. So
Speaker 1: I'll go with either one, though on a slightly off note,
Speaker 1: as I do with most guests. I've been immersing myself
Speaker 1: in your work recently, and I read the Book of
Speaker 1: Longings that I mentioned to you that I also read
Speaker 1: your book When the Heartweight Spiritual direction for life's sacred questions.
Speaker 1: But my girlfriend and I also listened to A Secret
Speaker 1: Life of Bees on our long drive from Atlanta to Columbus,
Speaker 1: and she was so struck by how that book brought
Speaker 1: her back to the childhood her mother described, And her
Speaker 1: mother has Alzheimer's, so there's a lot going on there.
Speaker 1: It was a really emotional and beautiful book. So when
Speaker 1: you when you mentioned a Southern way of saying it,
Speaker 1: it really brought that up in me that we did
Speaker 1: do all that recently, and and how southern to her
Speaker 1: some of your work is and really brings her back
Speaker 1: to to an old South of of her mother's childhood. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's nice to hear this latest book. Anna has a
Speaker 1: prayer that she says throughout the book. It's kind of
Speaker 1: her prayer, and I'm going to read it, and I
Speaker 1: thought we could just talk about it for a moment.
Speaker 1: And that prayer is Lord, our God, hear my prayer,
Speaker 1: the prayer of my heart, bless the largeness inside of me,
Speaker 1: no matter how I fear it. Where did that come
Speaker 1: from for you? And what's the meaning of it for
Speaker 1: you in your life? Well, this largeness, this was Anna's
Speaker 1: way of describing something that I thoroughly believe in for
Speaker 1: every person, and that is a kind of particular genius
Speaker 1: that dwells in every person. I think of this largeness
Speaker 1: as um It can be our passion, our deepest authentic voice.
Speaker 1: However we think of what our largeness is, I think
Speaker 1: our mission is to try and bring that forth in ourselves,
Speaker 1: for not just the fulfillment of ourselves, but for the
Speaker 1: world around us. But I do believe Anna is trying
Speaker 1: to talk about her own particular genius here, and her
Speaker 1: genius is something she longs for, which is to write
Speaker 1: the lost stories of women and to have a voice
Speaker 1: in the world. Now this resonates with me because it's
Speaker 1: very similar to my own longings, and Anna in many
Speaker 1: ways reflects a lot of myself. I guess I long
Speaker 1: to write the stories of women. I longed to have
Speaker 1: a voice in the world, and these things live in me,
Speaker 1: and I think this is probably the largeness I was given.
Speaker 1: So when I first decided I wanted to write fiction.
Speaker 1: I was in my forties, and I remember I was
Speaker 1: in Greece on a trip with my daughter and friends,
Speaker 1: and we went to this little convent, Greek Orthodox convent,
Speaker 1: and the little nuns because she was I say a little,
Speaker 1: because she was for eleven at least, and she said,
Speaker 1: we like our guests to come and stand under this
Speaker 1: tree where there was an icon of the Virgin Mary
Speaker 1: sitting in the branches, and to ask the prayer that
Speaker 1: that is at the bottom of their heart. Now you
Speaker 1: see how this sort of turned up in my novel.
Speaker 1: When she said that, the first thing that came to
Speaker 1: me was my prayer at the bottom of my heart
Speaker 1: is I want to be a novelist. I had not
Speaker 1: written fiction up until that point, but I longed to,
Speaker 1: and so that's what I said. I think for Anna,
Speaker 1: she looked deep into herself and came up with this prayer.
Speaker 1: And I believe this is something women long to do,
Speaker 1: to find that that prayer in themselves and that largeness
Speaker 1: their their own genius. I love that blessed the largeness
Speaker 1: inside of me, no matter how I fear it. And
Speaker 1: I think there's an inverse to that. Sometimes we fear
Speaker 1: it because we worry what it's going to look like
Speaker 1: if it shows up into the outside world. You know what,
Speaker 1: what is bringing this largeness out of me going to
Speaker 1: mean to the life around me? And then there's another way,
Speaker 1: and this is I often hear this from a lot
Speaker 1: of listeners. Are people who I coach who also fear
Speaker 1: that it's not really there. Yes, there is a lot
Speaker 1: of fear around this. Um. Just believing that we have
Speaker 1: this aspect of ourselves something to offer the world and
Speaker 1: to offer ourselves is sometimes hard for people. So it
Speaker 1: requires just really listening and believing and taking a leap somehow.
Speaker 1: Much of the fear has to do with whether how
Speaker 1: this will be met in the world around us. Um.
Speaker 1: It rearranges not just your life, but the lives of
Speaker 1: people around you who may not wish to see your
Speaker 1: largeness because it is somehow inconvenient for them. And I
Speaker 1: think there's a fear of just being visible, of being
Speaker 1: audible in the world. I'm suddenly thinking of one of
Speaker 1: my favorite poets. I like to read poetry. I can't
Speaker 1: write it, but I'd love to read it. It's it's
Speaker 1: my scriptures, I guess, um. David White and he aligned
Speaker 1: that he writes is, um, let's see, revelation can be
Speaker 1: terrible knowing you can never hide your voice again. It
Speaker 1: is terrible in some way to think about and being
Speaker 1: visible and being audible is a choice, and it's part
Speaker 1: of the fear of the largeness. I suppose the other
Speaker 1: thing that I thought was so beautiful that you mentioned
Speaker 1: there was really the love story between Anna and Jesus,
Speaker 1: which is certainly going to be controversial, but I don't
Speaker 1: want to focus on that aspect of it. What is
Speaker 1: so beautiful is the way that they nurture the largeness
Speaker 1: in each other. And as you you said just a
Speaker 1: moment ago, sometimes the largeness coming out of us can
Speaker 1: be inconvenient for those around us. And it's a beautiful
Speaker 1: story between the two of them because each of their
Speaker 1: largeness is certainly inconvenient for the other at points, and
Speaker 1: yet they nurture and bless it in each other. It's
Speaker 1: a really beautiful thing. I wanted so much for this
Speaker 1: relationship to be a great love story. I wanted them
Speaker 1: to model, in a way some of what's possible in
Speaker 1: a marriage. There is a moment in a scene in
Speaker 1: the novel in which they tell one another that they
Speaker 1: blessed the largeness in one another. And I think that
Speaker 1: is just a beautiful thing in a relationship, whether it's
Speaker 1: a marriage or friendship or whatever, to just bless the
Speaker 1: largeness in another person. We need that not only from
Speaker 1: within ourselves, but it helps us to believe in it
Speaker 1: if someone else can see it and bless it. And yes,
Speaker 1: they do that for one another, and it is inconvenient
Speaker 1: at times. Anna particularly um struggles to bring it forth,
Speaker 1: not because she has any lack of believing it or
Speaker 1: even wanting to bring it forth. It's about the culture.
Speaker 1: It's about the religious dictates and limitations and just how
Speaker 1: the world is arranged against women, and she has to
Speaker 1: work very hard to do it, and even Jesus cannot
Speaker 1: overcome all of that for her. And there is some
Speaker 1: conflict in their marriage around this, which I think brings
Speaker 1: some humanity into it. I agree. And what I think
Speaker 1: is also interesting is if we had flipped the story
Speaker 1: and we had been able to perhaps be inside Jesus
Speaker 1: had more, we might have seen more of how it
Speaker 1: suffered and how it caused him to suffer to be
Speaker 1: apart from her. Yes, they did have long stretches of
Speaker 1: being a part as he was an itiner. In my version,
Speaker 1: he's this itinerant stonemason carpenter who has to find work
Speaker 1: outside of Nazareth at times leading up to these years
Speaker 1: of his public ministry. So I was really working in
Speaker 1: those those years that are unknown about him that we
Speaker 1: have no record, and I was fascinated with the idea
Speaker 1: of what was an eighteen year old Jesus like or
Speaker 1: a twenty two year old Jesus and um was he
Speaker 1: following the Jewish ethic of being married or what was
Speaker 1: he like? So those questions, the what if about that
Speaker 1: was what drove the story for me, but mostly the
Speaker 1: what ifs about Anna, because while Jesus is a big character,
Speaker 1: it's her story thoroughly. That's right, that's right, It totally is.
Speaker 1: And the love between the two of them makes me
Speaker 1: think of a Relkal quote in Letters to a Young
Speaker 1: Poet where he's describing what mature love might look like,
Speaker 1: and he says love consists of this two solitudes that meet,
Speaker 1: protect and greet each other. And I just love that,
Speaker 1: and I just felt like that was kind of what
Speaker 1: their love was. They they protected the greatness in each other. Yes, actually,
Speaker 1: that is one of my favorite quotes. And it was
Speaker 1: a wedding gift to me from my husband. He gave me,
Speaker 1: and this I will not tell you how long ago
Speaker 1: it was, because it was just long ago. He gave
Speaker 1: me a little box and inside of it with three
Speaker 1: links of chain, and he had that verse from the
Speaker 1: poem inside of it written underneath the chain. And I thought,
Speaker 1: oh boy, I've gotten chain as a wedding gift. This
Speaker 1: is like chain link it is this And he said
Speaker 1: he's a was a psychotherapist. He's retired now, but he said, well,
Speaker 1: the chains on each end. That's my life and this
Speaker 1: is your life. But we're joined in the middle by
Speaker 1: this um common love and union, but we each have
Speaker 1: our separate lives, our solitudes. And I have kept that
Speaker 1: chain until I gave it to my daughter on her
Speaker 1: wedding day and said, continue that that is really beautiful. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I want to move on to talking a little
Speaker 1: bit about a description in the Book of God that
Speaker 1: I that I love and um, this is this is
Speaker 1: Anna speaking. She says. It reassured me suddenly to think
Speaker 1: of God not as a person like ourselves, but as
Speaker 1: an essence that lived everywhere. God could be love as
Speaker 1: Jesus believed for me, he would be I am who
Speaker 1: I am, the being nous in our midst And I
Speaker 1: just think that is so lovely and so aligns with
Speaker 1: my idea of the divine as being this essence that
Speaker 1: lives everywhere. Yes, well me too. There is an evolving
Speaker 1: concept of God for Anna in this story, and certainly
Speaker 1: I have done this throughout my life. My ideas about
Speaker 1: God have changed and transformed, and I hope expanded and expanded.
Speaker 1: And this is once again happening for Anna. And early
Speaker 1: in the book when she meets Jesus, for I think
Speaker 1: it's the second time there, they have this conversation and
Speaker 1: Anna says something like, why can't we free God? And
Speaker 1: that is what's happening here. I think she's freeing herself
Speaker 1: from these concepts of God that are narrow and limiting
Speaker 1: and very and I say this very purposefully man made,
Speaker 1: and she's allowing herself to reimagine God for herself. That's
Speaker 1: a very mystical standpoint, actually very individuated kind of thing
Speaker 1: to do, rather than to take an ecclesiastical approach. But
Speaker 1: God is not a person, she says, because they can
Speaker 1: be so disappointing, but I think of God like that
Speaker 1: as well. I am who I am, the being this
Speaker 1: in our midst. God for me is both imminent in
Speaker 1: dwelling in this world and in matter, but also transcendent.
Speaker 1: And yet I have to recognize Eric that if we're
Speaker 1: going to relate to a divine presence, we somehow need
Speaker 1: to personalize it, and it's very hard to relate to
Speaker 1: a being this in our midst. So I totally get
Speaker 1: that people want to relate to m image we of
Speaker 1: the divine, and it's a way of connecting as long
Speaker 1: as we understand that there is a God beyond our
Speaker 1: concept of God. Yeah, boy, that just what you said.
Speaker 1: They're just brought up a whole bunch of different ideas
Speaker 1: in in my mind, one makes me think of in
Speaker 1: in Hinduism, they say there's sort of four routes to
Speaker 1: God and um, you know, one of the routes is
Speaker 1: called Jana yoga, which is more knowledge, but it's more
Speaker 1: knowledge of what you just said, God is sort of
Speaker 1: this unified field of being or this um this uh
Speaker 1: ground of being. But then the next type is Bakti yoga,
Speaker 1: which is love and and it's really about you know
Speaker 1: for people who need more of of an image, and
Speaker 1: that's really what you know a lot of people think
Speaker 1: Hinduism is all these different gods, but really all it
Speaker 1: is is those various gods appear as a way of
Speaker 1: seeing an aspect of God that we can visualize and
Speaker 1: grab onto. It's a facet of the Godhead that's behind
Speaker 1: it all. Yes, And it's amazing to me as I
Speaker 1: was writing this book, how our own lens that we
Speaker 1: look at God through, or even at Jesus through. Now
Speaker 1: it's so dependent on just our own history, our own proclivities,
Speaker 1: our own need um God becomes somehow what we need
Speaker 1: God to be in some very anthropomorphic way. But God
Speaker 1: is beyond all of our concepts, I think, in my
Speaker 1: in my humble estimation, And that is what Anna is
Speaker 1: trying to say here. For her, she is freeing God
Speaker 1: and it is the ground of her being. So at
Speaker 1: another point in the book, Mary, Jesus's mother, is talking
Speaker 1: about Jesus and she says he learned well and is
Speaker 1: suffering didn't harden him. It's always a marvel when one's
Speaker 1: pain doesn't settle into bitterness but brings forth kindness instead.
Speaker 1: And I love that line. And I bring it up
Speaker 1: because one of the things that I talked about on
Speaker 1: this show a lot, and it's one of the questions
Speaker 1: I asked guests a lot is what is it that
Speaker 1: causes some people to grow from difficulty and to become
Speaker 1: more compassionate, beautiful, strong wise and other people become bitter
Speaker 1: from it? And I was just kind of curious. This
Speaker 1: line brought that right up for me. Is suffering didn't
Speaker 1: harden him, It brought forth kindness. What do you think
Speaker 1: are the aspects that cause us to be able to
Speaker 1: grow from difficulty and pain versus become embittered by it?
Speaker 1: What comes to me is the word vulnerable, of vulnerability.
Speaker 1: It's very hard to take off all that armor, that
Speaker 1: ego armor, I guess, and just be vulnerable to learn
Speaker 1: from something, to say, this happened and I want to
Speaker 1: grow from it. You know. In the Secret Life of Bees,
Speaker 1: I had this character t Ray, who was the father
Speaker 1: of my main character Lily, and he is the example
Speaker 1: of the opposite. I mean, he became embittered and hardened
Speaker 1: by the circumstances that had happened to him of his
Speaker 1: losing his wife, and it followed him all the days
Speaker 1: of his life, and he grew harder and harder, and
Speaker 1: your heart shrinks and shrinks, and then it's, you know,
Speaker 1: because are difficult to kind of break out of that.
Speaker 1: I guess the mystery is to allow ourselves in the
Speaker 1: moment to just be broken by it, to just be broken,
Speaker 1: and in that vulnerability to choose love compassion. And it
Speaker 1: requires a real relinquishment of a lot of our ego
Speaker 1: to do that, I guess. But you know, I see
Speaker 1: that as what a large part of life is about,
Speaker 1: is bringing the ego into some kind of relationship, subservient
Speaker 1: relationship to one's divine self, that nature of oneself. So
Speaker 1: it's a long and difficult journey though. Yeah. And I
Speaker 1: told you in the introduction that I also read your
Speaker 1: book When the Heartweight Spiritual Direction for Life's Sacred Questions,
Speaker 1: and I said I would bring these two books together.
Speaker 1: And here goes attempt number one. And because in that
Speaker 1: book you're describing having a conversation with your counselor, and
Speaker 1: the counselor says, the pain won't kill you, but running
Speaker 1: from it might. And I wonder if that's somewhat of
Speaker 1: another way of saying what you just said. Well, that's interesting. Yes,
Speaker 1: it probably is. I do remember that very well. That's
Speaker 1: a lesson that Yafa, my character in the Book of
Speaker 1: Longings also tells Lily. You know, she says it like this,
Speaker 1: Let life be life, and terrible things are going to happen,
Speaker 1: and beautiful things are going to happen. I think Frederick
Speaker 1: Bittner said it like that. Terrible things will happen, beautiful
Speaker 1: things will happen, but don't be afraid. Life will be life,
Speaker 1: and we just have to have a radical acceptance of
Speaker 1: that and not run from it, and just take it
Speaker 1: all in, the pain, the beauty, the terror, all of it,
Speaker 1: live it, and do our best to become more compassionate
Speaker 1: because of it. I was about to go right to
Speaker 1: those words from her next, going back to when the heartweights,
Speaker 1: you followed the line I just read with this idea
Speaker 1: that avoiding pain, rather than having the discipline encouraged to
Speaker 1: confront it and live it through, only compounds suffering in
Speaker 1: the long run. And when you mentioned your character t Ray,
Speaker 1: not only did the pain harden him, the suffering that
Speaker 1: he endured in the long run was so vast because
Speaker 1: he couldn't face his pain. That's right, and the suffering
Speaker 1: that will come out of that will be vastly worse,
Speaker 1: um than just going through it at the moment um.
Speaker 1: I think that healing, the path to healing is right
Speaker 1: through the wound. So you just turn and move through
Speaker 1: the wound and process it and move on. There's a
Speaker 1: certain metabolizing that our soul. I often think of the
Speaker 1: soul as having its own little digestive system, you know,
Speaker 1: and you have to metabolize a digest these things that
Speaker 1: happened to us and move through our soul and let
Speaker 1: it go, and then we're freed somehow. Yeah. I love
Speaker 1: I love that idea of the digestive system of the soul.
Speaker 1: That's great. Another line from When the Heart Waits is
Speaker 1: that we haven't been willing to face the fact that
Speaker 1: while the spiritual journey is joyous and full, it's also
Speaker 1: long and hard. It asks much. Yes, And that was
Speaker 1: part of that book, was rediscovering for myself the contemplative
Speaker 1: nature of waiting in the transformation. There's just this period
Speaker 1: of time that is required, and who wants to sit
Speaker 1: still for all of this? I mean partic picularly today.
Speaker 1: I wrote that book thirty four years ago, and I
Speaker 1: was you know, talking about how fast paced everything was
Speaker 1: and how busy we were, and oh, my facts machines
Speaker 1: and all of this. Well, my grandson doesn't even know
Speaker 1: what a fax machine is. We have so moved beyond that, Um,
Speaker 1: And I think the contemplative nature of what we need
Speaker 1: now in order to transform is being lost. To have
Speaker 1: time for the soul to digest, we have to cultivate
Speaker 1: something like paying attention and moments in order to actually
Speaker 1: do that. Um. Wordsworth called them spots of time in
Speaker 1: his poem The Prelude. We just need spots of time
Speaker 1: where we can be a refuge from ourselves, from those
Speaker 1: driven selves we are, and and just be silent and still.
Speaker 1: I really believe in that. Of course, there's some you know,
Speaker 1: nassent monk in me, I guess, and there's my name
Speaker 1: right there. I'm living up to it. But I need
Speaker 1: that in my life, and it seems harder and harder
Speaker 1: to come by. You feel like you're just besieged somehow.
Speaker 1: So I saw When the Heart Weights as a rediscovery
Speaker 1: of those kinds of moments that allowed me to be
Speaker 1: and to transform. Yeah, you're right, And in that book
Speaker 1: you do mention you know you you refer to us
Speaker 1: as becoming Quickoholics, you know, And again that was thirty
Speaker 1: five years ago, and we were Quickoholics then. I don't
Speaker 1: know what the word is for us now, Yeah, crazed
Speaker 1: maybe crazed? Yeah yeah. Another idea that comes up in
Speaker 1: the new book, the Book of Longing is this idea
Speaker 1: of mothering. What does it mean to be a mother?
Speaker 1: And the Altha, who is Anna's aunt, who we've already
Speaker 1: quoted a couple of times as having some very wise
Speaker 1: things to say, says do her at some point, Anna,
Speaker 1: I don't doubt you should give yourself to motherhood. I
Speaker 1: only questioned, is what you're meant to mother? Tell me
Speaker 1: more about that. Well, Anna is not one who wants
Speaker 1: to have actual physical children. She just knows that this
Speaker 1: is not meant for her. And so y'all supposes this
Speaker 1: question to her, what is it you're meant to mother?
Speaker 1: And it's kind of revelatory for Anna because she hadn't
Speaker 1: thought of it like this. And now we're back to
Speaker 1: what we were discussing before your largeness. Are we not
Speaker 1: meant to mother that? That is, to incubate it, to
Speaker 1: nurture it, to bring it forth to labor for it,
Speaker 1: then to take it into the world and stand by it.
Speaker 1: So this is what I've tried to do with my writing,
Speaker 1: is to mother it. And I think of it as
Speaker 1: a real important well not maybe as important as my
Speaker 1: own two children, but important in the generation of my soul,
Speaker 1: to be generative and to bring forth what I want
Speaker 1: to bring forth in the world. So for me, that's
Speaker 1: like a mothering of something else, right, right, And I
Speaker 1: was struck by this idea of mothering. I was. I
Speaker 1: was also struck by how a lot of mothering is waiting.
Speaker 1: You know, your your book When the heart weights, We've
Speaker 1: referenced a couple of times, and I was sort of
Speaker 1: struck by how, you know, particularly in the process we
Speaker 1: think of as giving birth right, the most of the
Speaker 1: time that process is waiting. Yes, and again it's it's
Speaker 1: such a hard thing to do. And I don't think
Speaker 1: sometimes women particularly might think of mothering, say a creative
Speaker 1: work um as motherhood. But I wanted to plant that
Speaker 1: idea just that remembering that we have this inside of us,
Speaker 1: that is that we can grow from within and bring
Speaker 1: forth without And this is not limited just to women.
Speaker 1: I think men can mother to what is in them.
Speaker 1: To bring forth, and I think of the mothering aspect
Speaker 1: of God, and even the creative life to me has
Speaker 1: so much to do with darkness and silence and growing
Speaker 1: something inside that is true and real, and the labor
Speaker 1: and the waiting for it all. So I see the
Speaker 1: just the creative part of life is very like a
Speaker 1: dark Madonna rom in when the heart weights. You say,
Speaker 1: we seem to have focused so much on exuberant beginnings
Speaker 1: and victorious endings that we've forgotten about the slow, sometimes
Speaker 1: torturous unraveling of God's grace that takes place in the
Speaker 1: middle places. And I love that idea. Whether we're thinking
Speaker 1: of birth, you know, there's these exuberant beginnings like I'm
Speaker 1: pregnant and victorious endings I just gave birth, or in
Speaker 1: writing a novel, oh I've got the idea is the
Speaker 1: exuberant beginning and the victorious ending is oh the book
Speaker 1: is published. But there's all this middle place in both
Speaker 1: those which can be you know, as you said, sometimes slow,
Speaker 1: sometimes torturous. Actually, and that middle place, well, that's life.
Speaker 1: That's real life. Um. It's getting up every day and
Speaker 1: having the courage to choose compassion or pay attention or right, bravely. Um,
Speaker 1: it's the work, it's the sitting in the chair. It's
Speaker 1: just life itself. And I think learning to love that
Speaker 1: again and to value that and not see it as
Speaker 1: just passing time or trying to skip over it to
Speaker 1: get from here to there. But that's where our life is,
Speaker 1: and actually the creation happens in those moments that we're
Speaker 1: not even totally aware of. It's just I come into
Speaker 1: my study every morning and labor away and then okay,
Speaker 1: four and a half years later, there is the book.
Speaker 1: Is that your routine, in a daily writing routine, you
Speaker 1: go in and you spend the time working, regardless of
Speaker 1: how it's going. Yes, I will have to say that
Speaker 1: after I finish a book, I generally take some time
Speaker 1: away and let my self be fallow for a while
Speaker 1: and give time for some new creative idea to sprout
Speaker 1: or grow, because the ground needs to sit awhile for me.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I come in every day, and I mean
Speaker 1: I'm here for hours and hours. My husband will send
Speaker 1: the dog in after me with the toy to play with,
Speaker 1: and then I know, okay, I've been in too long.
Speaker 1: But I get lost in this realm and identify with
Speaker 1: my characters, and I love I love the actual writing
Speaker 1: of the book more than I like having written it. Frankly,
Speaker 1: I just liked the process. There's another part that you
Speaker 1: mentioned in When the Heart Weights, and you say, this
Speaker 1: is an important principle in Waiting, coming to the enormous
Speaker 1: realization that there are seed forces within us. The potential
Speaker 1: for wholeness life with a capital L is fully here.
Speaker 1: We don't have to go out in conquest and make
Speaker 1: it happen. We can simply let it happen consciously. And
Speaker 1: so I think that both those things are there. You're
Speaker 1: describing a process of showing up every day to try
Speaker 1: and birth it, but also um realizing that there is
Speaker 1: something within us. And this is back to the very
Speaker 1: early idea of Anna and the largeness inside of her,
Speaker 1: that that this process of bringing something to be is
Speaker 1: both an active and a passive. Is the wrong word
Speaker 1: because you describe waiting as not being passive, but there's
Speaker 1: a more active and perhaps a less active. That's not
Speaker 1: very articulate, but you get the idea of where I'm
Speaker 1: where I'm going with this. Well, contemplation is both it
Speaker 1: has an active part and and I guess we would
Speaker 1: say let's let's not use passive. Then let's say patients, nice, quiet, still,
Speaker 1: the being cultivating that sense of just being. I'll tell
Speaker 1: you what I call it sometimes loitering. And it's true.
Speaker 1: There is just something very spiritual and deep about loitering well,
Speaker 1: or loitering consciously. And the real key for me in
Speaker 1: waiting or in being still or patient is doing it consciously,
Speaker 1: doing it with attention and paying attention to what's the
Speaker 1: process inside of us and what we're bringing forth and
Speaker 1: so forth. So I have a strong desire sometimes to
Speaker 1: just go out and do and do, and then I
Speaker 1: have to return to this silent place in my So
Speaker 1: my words matter to me so much, I need silence
Speaker 1: beneath them in order to have the best words that
Speaker 1: I have out there, if that makes sense. They're grounded
Speaker 1: with silence. So there's a poem by May Sartin. Boy,
Speaker 1: I am really quoting poets today. I don't know so
Speaker 1: I am doing that. But May Sartin talked about a
Speaker 1: poem called the Old Woman, and she said, Old Woman,
Speaker 1: I meet you deep inside myself. You are the silence
Speaker 1: beneath my words. And when I heard that, I thought
Speaker 1: we all need that kind of silence beneath us to
Speaker 1: hold us, and that's the waiting. Do you try and
Speaker 1: take time aside for silence every day a meditative or
Speaker 1: a prayer practice, or is it something that you come
Speaker 1: to a little bit more organically. I used to do
Speaker 1: a very formal mindfulness meditation, and I still do it
Speaker 1: from time to time, but in a more um, as
Speaker 1: you said, organic way. I think of it as a
Speaker 1: spirituality of naturalness. Maybe I mean I want my spiritual
Speaker 1: life in my ordinary life to just be integrated so
Speaker 1: that it all becomes a prayer. And Thomas Merton, the
Speaker 1: monk Travis Monk, was really important in my um formation,
Speaker 1: and he said, you know, the birds are my prayer,
Speaker 1: The wind in the trees is my prayer for God
Speaker 1: is all in all. I liked that idea of just
Speaker 1: going about my ordinary day, doing my thing, but paying
Speaker 1: attention and understanding that there's this spark in it. Um So,
Speaker 1: I guess it's not so formal anymore as it used
Speaker 1: to be, but maybe one day I will be able
Speaker 1: to have it all be a prayer. That's the goal,
Speaker 1: is the integration of that, and that that ability to
Speaker 1: be more present as we go about our lives. I mean,
Speaker 1: for me, that's the whole point of taking time aside
Speaker 1: to sit specifically, is so that more of the moments
Speaker 1: of my day are imbued with that that stillness and
Speaker 1: that that quiet. And the quote that you just read
Speaker 1: by Merton reminded me of one of my favorite quotes
Speaker 1: from an old zen master, zen Master Dogan, and he said,
Speaker 1: enlightenment is intimacy with all things, and that is just
Speaker 1: resonates with a Merton quote. Yes, So, the last thing
Speaker 1: I'd like to ask you about, and we are near
Speaker 1: the end of our time, here is another part from
Speaker 1: When the Heart Waits, because I thought this was a
Speaker 1: really beautiful idea, and i'd like you just to say
Speaker 1: a little bit more about it, even though I'm asking
Speaker 1: you to quote or go back to a book that
Speaker 1: you wrote thirty years ago. Sorry about that, but I
Speaker 1: think you'll relate with this and have something wise to say.
Speaker 1: You say, letting go isn't one step, but many. It's
Speaker 1: a winding, spiraling process that happens on deep levels, and
Speaker 1: we must begin at the beginning by confronting our ambivalence. Yet, well,
Speaker 1: you hear my dog in the background to your dog
Speaker 1: is telling us the interview is over. Yes, And first
Speaker 1: of all, I don't mind it all talking about a
Speaker 1: book I wrote thirty four years ago. Somehow that book
Speaker 1: has endured and it has a kind of universality to
Speaker 1: it that I am so glad people of now new
Speaker 1: generations are able to relate to letting go. Yes, it
Speaker 1: is not a one time thing, is it. Uh. I
Speaker 1: find that life is like a spiral and you just
Speaker 1: go round and round, but you're always going in the
Speaker 1: right direction, hopefully. So it's that two steps forward, one
Speaker 1: step backward kind of thing. And you know, you go around,
Speaker 1: and every time you make the loop, you learn and
Speaker 1: you learn and you learn and you fall down a
Speaker 1: lot and you grasp again. I mean, that's just part
Speaker 1: of life, I suppose, at least it is for me.
Speaker 1: And I have to let go over and over and over.
Speaker 1: But the miracle, the mystery is that somehow, as you
Speaker 1: do this, it transforms you's over a period of time
Speaker 1: in the most subtle places inside of us, so that
Speaker 1: you realize you have changed one day, and it's not overnight.
Speaker 1: It's a long process. I think that's beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Well, Sue,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for taking the time to come on.
Speaker 1: I have really enjoyed this conversation. I have enjoyed it. Also, Eric,
Speaker 1: thank you, Yes, thank you. If what you just heard
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