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 too.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 2: think ring true. And yet for many of us, our
Speaker 2: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 2: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 2: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 2: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 2: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 2: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 2: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 2: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. We
Speaker 2: hope you'll enjoy this episode from the archive. Thanks for
Speaker 2: joining us. Our guest on this episode is Sue Monk Kidd,
Speaker 2: who was raised in the small town of Sylvester, Georgia,
Speaker 2: a place that deeply influenced the writing of her first novel,
Speaker 2: The Secret Life of Bees. Her book When the Heart
Speaker 2: Waits from nineteen ninety has become a touchstone on contemplative spirituality.
Speaker 2: Sue serves on the Writer's Council for Poets and Writers
Speaker 2: and is well known for her work in feminist theology.
Speaker 2: Her new book is a novel called The Book of Longings.
Speaker 3: Hi, Sue, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Thank you. It's nice to be here.
Speaker 3: It's a real pleasure to have you on.
Speaker 4: We're going to discuss your latest book, The Book of
Speaker 4: Longings here in a couple moments. But let's start like
Speaker 4: we always do, with the parable of the two wolves.
Speaker 4: There's a grandmother who's talking with her granddaughter and she says,
Speaker 4: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 4: are always at battle. What is a good wolf, which
Speaker 4: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 4: other's a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and
Speaker 4: hatred and fear. And the granddaughter stops and she thinks
Speaker 4: about it for a second, and she looks up at
Speaker 4: her grandmother and she says, well, grandmother, which one wins?
Speaker 4: And the grandmother says, the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 4: like to start off by asking you what that parable
Speaker 4: means to you in your life and in the work
Speaker 4: that you do.
Speaker 1: The moment that I read that parable, I thought instantly
Speaker 1: of what feels like to me the core of my
Speaker 1: spiritual life. Once the Dhali Lama said that he could
Speaker 1: sum up his in two words, which was kindness, or
Speaker 1: maybe that's one word kindness, and I never I thought
Speaker 1: that I was too complicated to do this, But I'm
Speaker 1: 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 what you pay attention to is what
Speaker 1: will either devour you or save you. And I think
Speaker 1: we become what we pay attention to. So it's a
Speaker 1: very important aspect of how I approach my life, and
Speaker 1: it's a constant practice. Really. So there's two wolves in
Speaker 1: me too, and I certainly feel them pulling me two
Speaker 1: ways about this, But I guess for me, it's all
Speaker 1: about the focusing on the attention I give to this moment,
Speaker 1: to this world, to my work, to my life, to
Speaker 1: the lives around me, to the divine in everything I love.
Speaker 4: That I think that's a beautiful way to start off.
Speaker 4: I do a course called Spiritual Habits, and attention is
Speaker 4: the first principle.
Speaker 3: It's like the place it all starts.
Speaker 4: What am I paying attention to day to day, moment
Speaker 4: to moment, So I'm right on board.
Speaker 3: With you there.
Speaker 4: Your latest book is called The Book of Longings, and
Speaker 4: it's an incredible novel. It's about a woman named Anna
Speaker 4: who is a very brave, ambitious, and creative woman in
Speaker 4: the first century who becomes the wife of Jesus, and
Speaker 4: I would say the book is about both of their
Speaker 4: journeys to becoming who they were meant to be.
Speaker 3: And it is.
Speaker 4: Really a beautiful book, like all of your books, but
Speaker 4: I really really enjoyed reading it.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much. That's what an author likes to hear.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And I hope that summary works for a very short,
Speaker 4: short summary of the book. And I don't want to
Speaker 4: give away any of the key parts of the book,
Speaker 4: but I'm going to pull out certain aspects of it
Speaker 4: that I think that we could talk about that align
Speaker 4: with what we talk about here on the show. And
Speaker 4: the first I'd like to talk about is and am
Speaker 4: I saying her name right? Is it Anna? Or is
Speaker 4: it Anna? How do you how in your mind? How
Speaker 4: is it pronounced?
Speaker 1: In my mind? It is Anna. I think that's a
Speaker 1: very Southern way of saying it. So I'll go with
Speaker 1: either one on.
Speaker 4: A slightly off note, as I do with most guests.
Speaker 4: I've been immersing myself in your work recently, and I
Speaker 4: read the Book of Longings that I mentioned to you
Speaker 4: that I also read your book When the Heartweights Spiritual
Speaker 4: Direction for life's sacred questions. But my girlfriend and I
Speaker 4: also listened to A Secret Life of Bees on our
Speaker 4: long drive from Atlanta to Columbus, and she was so
Speaker 4: struck by how that book brought her back to the
Speaker 4: childhood her mother described. And her mother has Alzheimer's, so
Speaker 4: there's a lot going on there. It was a really
Speaker 4: emotional and beautiful book. So when you mentioned a Southern
Speaker 4: way of saying it, it really brought that up in
Speaker 4: me that we did do all that recently, and how
Speaker 4: southern to her some of your work is and really
Speaker 4: brings her back to an old South of her mother's childhood.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's nice to hear. Ye.
Speaker 4: This latest book, Anna has a prayer that she says
Speaker 4: throughout the book. It's kind of her prayer and I'm
Speaker 4: going to read it and I thought we could just
Speaker 4: talk about it for a moment, and that prayer is
Speaker 4: Lord our God, hear my prayer, the prayer of my heart,
Speaker 4: bless the largeness inside of me, no matter how I
Speaker 4: fear it.
Speaker 3: Where did that.
Speaker 4: Come from for you? And what's the meaning of it
Speaker 4: for you in your life?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 1: This largeness, this was Anna's way of describing something that
Speaker 1: I thoroughly believe in for every person, and that is
Speaker 1: a kind of particular genius that dwells in every person.
Speaker 1: I think of this largeness as it can be our passion,
Speaker 1: our deepest authentic voice. However we think of what our
Speaker 1: largeness is, I think our mission is to try and
Speaker 1: bring that forth in ourselves, for not just the fulfillment
Speaker 1: of ourselves, but for the world around us. But I
Speaker 1: do believe Anna is trying to talk about her own
Speaker 1: particular genius here, and her genius is something she longs for,
Speaker 1: which is to write the lost stories of women and
Speaker 1: to have a voice in the world. Now, this resonates
Speaker 1: with me because it's very similar to my own longings,
Speaker 1: and Anna in many ways reflects a lot of myself.
Speaker 1: I guess I long to write the stories of women,
Speaker 1: I long to have a voice in the world, and
Speaker 1: these things live in me. And I think this is
Speaker 1: probably the largeness I was given. So when I first
Speaker 1: decided I wanted to write fiction, I was in my forties,
Speaker 1: and I remember I was in Greece on a trip
Speaker 1: with my daughter and friends, and we went to this
Speaker 1: little convent, Greek Orthodox convent, and the little Nune because
Speaker 1: she was I say little, because she was four eleven
Speaker 1: at least, and she said, we like our guests to
Speaker 1: come and stand under this tree where there was an
Speaker 1: icon of the version Mary sitting in the branches, and
Speaker 1: to ask the prayer that is at the bottom of
Speaker 1: their heart. Now you see how this sort of turned
Speaker 1: up in my novel. When she said that, the first
Speaker 1: thing that came to me was my prayer at the
Speaker 1: bottom of my heart is I want to be a novelist.
Speaker 1: I had not written fiction up until that point, but
Speaker 1: I longed to, and so that's what I said. I
Speaker 1: think for Anna, she looked deep into herself and came
Speaker 1: up with this prayer. And I believe this is something
Speaker 1: women long to do, to find that prayer in themselves
Speaker 1: and that largeness their own genius.
Speaker 4: I love that blessed the largeness inside of me, no
Speaker 4: matter how I fear it. And I think there's an
Speaker 4: inverse to that. Sometimes we fear it because we worry
Speaker 4: what it's going to look like if it shows up
Speaker 4: into the outside world. You know, what is bringing this
Speaker 4: largeness out of me going to mean to the life
Speaker 4: around me? And then there's another way, and this is
Speaker 4: I often hear this from a lot of listeners or
Speaker 4: people who I coach, who also fear that it's not
Speaker 4: really there.
Speaker 1: Yes, there is a lot of fear around this. Just
Speaker 1: believing that we have this aspect of ourselves something to
Speaker 1: offer the world and to offer ourselves. It's sometimes hard
Speaker 1: for people, so it requires just really listening and believing
Speaker 1: and taking a leap somehow. Most of the fear has
Speaker 1: to do with whether how this will be met in
Speaker 1: the world around us. It rearranges not just your life,
Speaker 1: but the lives of people around you who may not
Speaker 1: wish to see your largeness because it is somehow inconvenient
Speaker 1: for them. And I think there's a fear of just
Speaker 1: being visible, of being audible in the world. I'm suddenly
Speaker 1: thinking of one of my favorite poets. I like to
Speaker 1: read poetry. I can't write it, but I love to
Speaker 1: read it. It's my scriptures, I guess David White and
Speaker 1: a line that he writes is let's see, revelation can
Speaker 1: be terrible knowing you can never hide your voice again.
Speaker 1: It is terrible in some way to think about and
Speaker 1: being visible and being audible is a choice, and it's
Speaker 1: part of the fear of the largeness.
Speaker 4: I suppose the other thing that I thought was so
Speaker 4: beautiful that you mentioned there was really the love story
Speaker 4: between Anna and Jesus, which is certainly going to be controversial,
Speaker 4: but I don't want to focus on that aspect of it.
Speaker 4: What is so beautiful is the way that they nurture
Speaker 4: the largeness in each other. And as you said just
Speaker 4: a moment ago, sometimes the largeness coming out of us
Speaker 4: can be inconvenient for those around us. And it's a
Speaker 4: beautiful story between the two of them because each of
Speaker 4: their largeness is certainly inconvenient for the other at points,
Speaker 4: and yet they nurture and bless it in each other.
Speaker 4: It's a really beautiful thing.
Speaker 1: I wanted so much for this relationship to be a
Speaker 1: great love story. I wanted them to model in a
Speaker 1: way some of what's possible in a marriage. There is
Speaker 1: a moment in a scene in the novel in which
Speaker 1: they tell one another that they bless the largeness in
Speaker 1: one another. And I think that is just a beautiful
Speaker 1: thing in a relationship, whether it's a marriage or friendship
Speaker 1: or whatever, to just bless the largeness in another person.
Speaker 1: We need that not only from within ourselves, but it
Speaker 1: helps us to believe in it if someone else can
Speaker 1: see it and bless it. And yes, they do that
Speaker 1: for one another, and it is inconvenient at times. Anna
Speaker 1: particularly struggles to bring it forth, not because she has
Speaker 1: any lack of believing it or even wanting to bring
Speaker 1: it forth. It's about the culture. It's about the religious
Speaker 1: dictates and limitations and just how the world is arranged
Speaker 1: against women, and she has to work very hard to
Speaker 1: do it. And even Jesus cannot overcome all of that
Speaker 1: for her. And there is some conflict in their marriage
Speaker 1: around this, which I think brings some humanity into it.
Speaker 3: I agree.
Speaker 4: And what I think is also interesting is if we
Speaker 4: had flipped the story and we had been able to
Speaker 4: perhaps be inside Jesus's head more, we might have seen
Speaker 4: more of how it suffered and how it caused him
Speaker 4: to suffer to be apart from her.
Speaker 1: Yes, they did have long stretches of being a part,
Speaker 1: as he was an itinan In my version, he's this
Speaker 1: itinerant stonemason carpenter who has to find work outside of
Speaker 1: Nazareth at times leading up to these years of his
Speaker 1: public ministry. So I was really working in those years
Speaker 1: that are unknown about him that we have no record,
Speaker 1: and I was fascinated with the idea of what was
Speaker 1: an eighteen year old Jesus like or a twenty two
Speaker 1: year old Jesus And was he following the Jewish ethic
Speaker 1: of being married or what was he like? So those questions,
Speaker 1: the what if about that was what drove the story
Speaker 1: for me, but mostly the what ifs about Anna, because
Speaker 1: while Jess is a big character, it's her story thoroughly.
Speaker 3: That's right, that's right, It totally is.
Speaker 4: And the love between the two of them makes me
Speaker 4: think of a Rilka quote in Letters to a Young
Speaker 4: Poet where he's describing what mature love might look like
Speaker 4: and he says love consists of this two solitudes that meet,
Speaker 4: protect and greet each other. And I just love that,
Speaker 4: and I just felt like that was kind of what
Speaker 4: their love was. They protected the greatness in each other.
Speaker 1: Yes, actually, that is one of my favorite quotes, and
Speaker 1: it was a wedding gift to me from my husband.
Speaker 1: He gave me, and this I will not tell you
Speaker 1: how long ago it was, because it was just long ago.
Speaker 1: He gave me a little box and inside of it
Speaker 1: were three links of chain and he had that verse
Speaker 1: from the poem inside of it written underneath the chain.
Speaker 1: And I thought, oh boy, I've gotten chain as a
Speaker 1: wedding gift. This is like, what is this? And he
Speaker 1: said he's a was a psychotherapist. He's retired now, but
Speaker 1: he said, well, the chains on each end, that's my
Speaker 1: life and this is your life. But we're joined in
Speaker 1: the middle by this common love and union, but we
Speaker 1: each have our separate lives, our solitudes. And I have
Speaker 1: kept that chain until I gave it to my daughter
Speaker 1: on her wedding day and said, continue.
Speaker 3: That that is really beautiful. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So I want to move on to talking a
Speaker 4: little bit about a description in the Book of God
Speaker 4: that I that I love. And this this is Anna speaking.
Speaker 3: She says.
Speaker 4: It reassured me suddenly to think of God not as
Speaker 4: a person like ourselves, but as an essence that lived everywhere.
Speaker 4: God could be love, as Jesus believed for me, he
Speaker 4: would be I am who I am, the beings in
Speaker 4: our midst and I just think that is so lovely
Speaker 4: and so aligns with my idea of the divine as
Speaker 4: being this essence that lives everywhere.
Speaker 1: Yes, well me too. There is an evolving concept of
Speaker 1: God for Anna in this story, and certainly I have
Speaker 1: done this throughout my life. My ideas about God have
Speaker 1: changed and transformed, and I hope expanded and expanded. And
Speaker 1: this is once again happening for Anna. And early in
Speaker 1: the book when she meets Jesus, for I think it's
Speaker 1: the second time they have this conversation, and Anna says
Speaker 1: something like, why can't we free God? And that is
Speaker 1: what's happening here. I think she's freeing herself from these
Speaker 1: concepts of God that are narrow and limiting and very
Speaker 1: and I say this very purposefully man made, and she's
Speaker 1: allowing herself to reimagine God for herself. That's a very
Speaker 1: mystical standpoint, actually very individuated kind of thing to do,
Speaker 1: rather than to take an ecclesiastical approach. But God is
Speaker 1: not a person, she says, because they can be so disappointing.
Speaker 1: But I think of God like that as well. I
Speaker 1: am who I am the being this in our midst.
Speaker 1: God for me is both imminent in dwelling in this
Speaker 1: world and in matter, but also transcendent. And yet I
Speaker 1: have to recognize Eric that if we're going to relate
Speaker 1: to a divine presence, we somehow need to personalize it,
Speaker 1: and it's very hard to relate to a being this
Speaker 1: in our midst. So I totally get that people want
Speaker 1: to relate to imagery of the divine and it's a
Speaker 1: way of connecting as long as we understand that there
Speaker 1: is a God beyond our concept of God.
Speaker 4: Yeah, what you said there just brought up a whole
Speaker 4: bunch of different ideas in my mind. One makes me
Speaker 4: think of in Hinduism, they say there's sort of four
Speaker 4: routes to God, and you know, one of the routes
Speaker 4: is called jana yoga, which is more knowledge, but it's
Speaker 4: more knowledge of what you just said, God is sort
Speaker 4: of this unified field of being or this this.
Speaker 3: Ground of being.
Speaker 4: But then the next type is Bakhdi yoga, which is
Speaker 4: love and it's really about, you know, for people who
Speaker 4: need more of an image, and that's really what you know,
Speaker 4: a lot of people think Hinduism is all these different gods.
Speaker 4: But really all it is is those various gods appear
Speaker 4: as a way of seeing and aspect of God that
Speaker 4: we can visualize and grab on to. It's a facet
Speaker 4: of the Godhead that's behind it all.
Speaker 1: Yes, And it's amazing to me as I was writing
Speaker 1: this book, how our own lens that we look at
Speaker 1: God through, or even at Jesus through now is so
Speaker 1: dependent on just our own history, our own proclivities, our
Speaker 1: own need. God becomes somehow what we need God to
Speaker 1: be in some very anthropomorphic way. But God is beyond
Speaker 1: all of our concepts, I think, in my humble estimation,
Speaker 1: and that is what Anna is trying to say here.
Speaker 1: For her, she is freeing God and it is the
Speaker 1: ground of her being.
Speaker 4: So it had another point in the book, Mary, Jesus's
Speaker 4: mother is talking about Jesus and she says he learned
Speaker 4: well and his suffering didn't harden him. It's always a
Speaker 4: marvel when one's pain doesn't settle into bitterness but brings
Speaker 4: forth kindness instead. And I love that line and I
Speaker 4: bring it up because one of the things that I
Speaker 4: talk about on the show a lot, and it's one
Speaker 4: of the questions I ask guests a lot is what
Speaker 4: is it that causes some people to grow from difficulty
Speaker 4: and to become more compassionate, beautiful, strong wise and other
Speaker 4: people become bitter from it? And I was just kind
Speaker 4: of curious. This line brought that right up for me.
Speaker 4: Is suffering didn't harden him for kindness? What do you
Speaker 4: think are the aspects that cause us to be able
Speaker 4: to 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 right and
Speaker 1: hardened by the circumstances that had happened to him of
Speaker 1: his losing his wife, and it followed him all the
Speaker 1: days of his life, and he grew harder and harder.
Speaker 1: And your heart shrinks and shrinks, and then it's you know,
Speaker 1: it becomes more difficult to kind of break out of that.
Speaker 1: I guess the mystery is to allow ourselves.
Speaker 5: In the moment to just be broken by it, to
Speaker 5: just be broken, and in that vulnerability to choose love compassion.
Speaker 1: And it requires a real relinquishment of a lot of
Speaker 1: our ego to do that, I guess. But 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.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And I told you in the introduction that I also
Speaker 4: read your book When the Heart Weights Spiritual Direction for
Speaker 4: life's sacred Questions, and I said I would bring these
Speaker 4: two books together. And here goes attempt number one, because
Speaker 4: in that book you're describing having a conversation with your counselor,
Speaker 4: and the counselor says, the pain won't kill you, but
Speaker 4: running from it might. And I wonder if that's somewhat
Speaker 4: of another way of saying what you just said.
Speaker 1: Well, that's interesting, Yes, it probably is. I do remember
Speaker 1: that very well. That's a lesson that y Altha, my
Speaker 1: character in the Book of Longings, also tells Lily you know,
Speaker 1: she says it like this, Let life be life, and
Speaker 1: terrible things are going to happen, and beautiful things are
Speaker 1: going to happen. I think Frederick Beetner said it like that.
Speaker 1: Terrible things will happen, beautiful things will happen, but don't
Speaker 1: be afraid. Life will be life, and we just have
Speaker 1: to have a radical acceptance of that and not run
Speaker 1: from it, and just take it all in, the pain,
Speaker 1: the beauty, the terror, all of it, live it, and
Speaker 1: do our best to become more compassionate because of it.
Speaker 4: I was about to go right to those words from
Speaker 4: her next going back to when the Heart weights, you
Speaker 4: followed the line I just read with this idea that
Speaker 4: avoiding pain, rather than having the discipline encourage to confront
Speaker 4: it and live it through, only compounds suffering in the
Speaker 4: long run. And when you mentioned your character Tray, not
Speaker 4: only did the pain harden him, the suffering that he
Speaker 4: endured in the long run was so vast because he
Speaker 4: couldn't face his pain.
Speaker 1: That's right, and the suffering that will come out of
Speaker 1: that will be vastly worse than just going through it.
Speaker 1: At the moment, I think that healing, the path to
Speaker 1: healing is right through the wound, so you just turn
Speaker 1: and move through the wound and process it and move on.
Speaker 1: There's a certain metabolizing that our soul. I have to
Speaker 1: think of the soul as having its own little digestive system,
Speaker 1: you know, and you have to metabolize and digest these
Speaker 1: things that happen to us and move through our soul
Speaker 1: and let it go, and then we're freed somehow.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I love that idea of the digestive system of the soul.
Speaker 3: That's great.
Speaker 4: Another line from When the Heart Waits is that we
Speaker 4: haven't been willing to face the fact that while the
Speaker 4: spiritual journey is joyous and full, it's also long and hard.
Speaker 1: It asks much yes, And that was part of that book,
Speaker 1: was rediscovering for myself the contemplative nature of waiting in
Speaker 1: the transformation. There's just this period of time that is required,
Speaker 1: and who wants to sit still for all of this?
Speaker 1: I mean, particularly today. I wrote that book thirty four
Speaker 1: years ago, and I was talking about how fast paced
Speaker 1: everything was and how busy we were, and oh, my
Speaker 1: fax machines and all of this. Well, my grandson doesn't
Speaker 1: even know what a fax machine is. We have so
Speaker 1: moved beyond that, And I think the contemplative nature of
Speaker 1: what we need now in order to transform is being lost.
Speaker 1: To have time for the soul to digest, we have
Speaker 1: to cultivate something like paying attention and moments in order
Speaker 1: to actually do that. Wordsworth called them spots of time
Speaker 1: in his poem The Prelude. We just need spots of
Speaker 1: time where we can be a refuge from ourselves, from
Speaker 1: those driven selves we are, and just be silent and still.
Speaker 1: I really believe in that. Of course, there's some you know,
Speaker 1: nascent 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 Waits as a rediscovery
Speaker 1: of those kinds of moments that allowed me to be
Speaker 1: and to transform.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're right.
Speaker 4: And in that book you do mention, you know, you
Speaker 4: refer to us as becoming quickaholics, you know, And again
Speaker 4: that was thirty five years ago, and we were quickaholics then.
Speaker 3: I don't know what the word is for us now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, crazed maybe.
Speaker 3: Crazed, Yeah, Yeah.
Speaker 4: Another idea that comes up in the new book, the
Speaker 4: Book of Longing, is this idea of mothering.
Speaker 3: What does it mean to be a mother?
Speaker 4: And Yautha, who is Anna's aunt, who we've already quoted
Speaker 4: a couple of times as having some very wise things
Speaker 4: to say, says to her at some point, Anna, I
Speaker 4: don't doubt you should give yourself to motherhood. I only questioned,
Speaker 4: is what you're meant to mother? Tell me more about that.
Speaker 1: Well, Anna is not one who wants to have actual
Speaker 1: physical children. She just knows that this is not meant
Speaker 1: for her. And so y'all opposes this question to her,
Speaker 1: what is it you're meant to mother? And it's kind
Speaker 1: of revelatory for Anna because she hadn't thought of it
Speaker 1: like this. And now we're back to what we were
Speaker 1: discussing before your largeness? Are we not meant to mother that?
Speaker 1: That is, to incubate it, to nurture it, to bring
Speaker 1: it forth, to labor for it, then to take it
Speaker 1: into the world and stand by it. So this is
Speaker 1: what I've tried to do with my writing, is to
Speaker 1: mother it. And I think of it as a real
Speaker 1: important well not maybe as important as my own two children,
Speaker 1: but important in the generation of my soul to be
Speaker 1: generative and to bring forth what I want to bring
Speaker 1: forth in the world. So for me, that's like a
Speaker 1: mothering of something else.
Speaker 4: Right, right, And I was struck by this idea of mothering.
Speaker 4: I was also struck by how a lot of mothering
Speaker 4: is waiting. You know, your book When the Heart Weights,
Speaker 4: We've referenced a couple of times, and I was sort
Speaker 4: of struck by how, you know, particularly in the process
Speaker 4: we think of as giving birth right, the most of
Speaker 4: the time that process is waiting.
Speaker 1: Yes, and again it's such a hard thing to do.
Speaker 1: And I don't think sometimes women particularly might think of mothering,
Speaker 1: say a creative work as motherhood. But I wanted to
Speaker 1: plant that idea just that, remembering that we have this
Speaker 1: inside of us, that is that we can grow from
Speaker 1: within and bring forth without And this is not limited
Speaker 1: just to women. I think men can mother too, what
Speaker 1: is in them to bring forth? And I think of
Speaker 1: the mothering aspect of God, and even the creative life
Speaker 1: to me, has so much to do with darkness and
Speaker 1: silence and growing something inside that is true and real,
Speaker 1: and the labor and the waiting for it all so
Speaker 1: I see just the creative part of life is very
Speaker 1: like a dark Madonna.
Speaker 3: In when the heart weights.
Speaker 4: You say, we seem to have focused so much on
Speaker 4: exuberant beginnings and victorious endings that we've forgotten about the slow,
Speaker 4: sometimes torturous unraveling of God's grace that takes place in
Speaker 4: the middle places.
Speaker 3: And I love that idea.
Speaker 4: Whether we're thinking of birth, you know, there's these exuberant
Speaker 4: beginnings like I'm pregnant and victorious endings I just gave birth,
Speaker 4: or in writing a novel, oh I've got the idea
Speaker 4: is the exuberant beginning and the victorious ending is oh,
Speaker 4: the book is published. But there's all this middle place
Speaker 4: in both those which can be you know, as you said,
Speaker 4: sometimes slow, sometimes torturous.
Speaker 1: Exactly, and that middle place, Wow, that's life. That's real life.
Speaker 1: It's getting up every day and having the courage to
Speaker 1: choose compassion or pay attention or write bravely. It's the work,
Speaker 1: it's the sitting in the chair. It's just life itself.
Speaker 1: And I think learning to love that again and to
Speaker 1: value that and not see it as just a passing
Speaker 1: time or trying to skip over it to get from
Speaker 1: here to there, But that's where our life is, and
Speaker 1: actually the creation happens in those moments that we're not
Speaker 1: even totally aware of. It's just I come into my
Speaker 1: study every morning and labor away and then okay, four
Speaker 1: and a half years later, there's the book.
Speaker 3: Is that your routine, a daily writing routine.
Speaker 4: You go in and you spend the time working, regardless
Speaker 4: of how it's going.
Speaker 1: Yes, I will have to say that after I finish
Speaker 1: a book, I generally take some time away and let
Speaker 1: my self be fallow for a while and give time
Speaker 1: for some new creative idea to sprout or grow, because
Speaker 1: the ground needs to sit a while for me. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I come in every day, and I mean I'm here
Speaker 1: for hours and hours. My husband will send the dog
Speaker 1: in after me with the toy to play with, and
Speaker 1: then I know, Okay, I've been in too long. But
Speaker 1: I get lost in this realm and identify with my characters.
Speaker 1: And I love the actual writing of the book more
Speaker 1: than I like having written it. Frankly, I just like
Speaker 1: the process.
Speaker 4: There's another part that you mentioned in When the Heart Waits,
Speaker 4: and you say, this is an important principle in waiting,
Speaker 4: coming to the enormous realization that there are seed forces
Speaker 4: within us. The potential for wholeness life with a capital
Speaker 4: L is fully here. We don't have to go out
Speaker 4: in conquest and make it happen. We can simply let
Speaker 4: it happen consciously. And so I think that both those
Speaker 4: things are there. You're describing a process of showing up
Speaker 4: every day to try and birth it, but also realizing
Speaker 4: that there is something within us. And this is back
Speaker 4: to the very early idea of Anna and the largeness
Speaker 4: inside of her. That this process of bringing something to
Speaker 4: be is both an active and a passive. Is the
Speaker 4: wrong word because you describe waiting as not being passive,
Speaker 4: but there's a more active and perhaps.
Speaker 3: A less active.
Speaker 4: That's not very articulate, but you get the idea of
Speaker 4: where I'm going with this.
Speaker 1: Well, contemplation is both. It has an active part, and
Speaker 1: I guess we would say, let's not use passive, then
Speaker 1: let's say patients nice quiet still the being cultivating that
Speaker 1: sense of just being. I tell you what I call
Speaker 1: it sometimes loitering, and it's true. There is just something
Speaker 1: very spiritual and deep about loitering well or loitering consciously.
Speaker 1: And the real key for me in waiting or in
Speaker 1: being still or patient, is doing it consciously, doing it
Speaker 1: with attention and paying attention to what's the process inside
Speaker 1: of us and what we're bringing forth and so forth.
Speaker 1: So I have a strong desire sometimes to just go
Speaker 1: out and do and do, and then I have to
Speaker 1: return to this silent place and myself. My words matter
Speaker 1: to me so much, I need silence beneath them in
Speaker 1: order to have the best words that I have out there,
Speaker 1: if that makes sense. They're grounded with silence. So there's
Speaker 1: a poem by May Sartin, Boy, I am really quoting
Speaker 1: poets today, So why I am doing that? But May
Speaker 1: Sartan's talked about a poem called the Old Woman, and
Speaker 1: she said, Old Woman, I meet you deep inside myself.
Speaker 1: You are the silence beneath my words. And when I
Speaker 1: heard that, I thought, we all need that kind of
Speaker 1: silence beneath us to hold us. And that's the waiting.
Speaker 4: Do you try and take time aside for silence every day,
Speaker 4: a meditative or a prayer practice or is it something
Speaker 4: that you come to a little bit more organically.
Speaker 1: I used to do a very formal mindfulness meditation, and
Speaker 1: I still do it from time to time, but in
Speaker 1: a more as you said, organic way. I think of
Speaker 1: it as a spirituality of naturalness. Maybe. I mean, I
Speaker 1: want my spiritual life in my ordinary life to just
Speaker 1: be integrated so that it all becomes a prayer. And
Speaker 1: Thomas Merton the monk Trappis Monk was really important in
Speaker 1: my formation, and he said, you know, the birds are
Speaker 1: my prayer. The wind in the trees is my prayer
Speaker 1: for God is all in all. I liked that idea
Speaker 1: of just going about my ordinary day, doing my thing,
Speaker 1: but paying attention and understanding that there's this spark in it.
Speaker 1: So I guess it's not so formal anymore as it
Speaker 1: used to be. But maybe one day I will be
Speaker 1: able to have it all be a prayer.
Speaker 4: That's the goal, is the integration of that and that
Speaker 4: ability to be more present as we go about our lives.
Speaker 4: I mean, for me, that's the whole point of taking
Speaker 4: time aside.
Speaker 3: To sit specifically, is so that.
Speaker 4: More of the moments of my day are imbued with
Speaker 4: that stillness and that quiet. And the quote that you
Speaker 4: just read by Merton reminded me of one of my
Speaker 4: favorite quotes from an old zen master zen Master Dogan,
Speaker 4: and he said, enlightenment is intimacy with all things, and
Speaker 4: that is just resonates with a Merton quote.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 3: So the last thing I'd like to ask you about.
Speaker 4: And we are near the end of our time, here
Speaker 4: is another part from When the Heart Waits, because I
Speaker 4: thought this was a really beautiful idea, and i'd like
Speaker 4: you just to say a little bit more about it,
Speaker 4: even though I'm asking you to quote or go back
Speaker 4: to a book that you wrote thirty years ago. Sorry
Speaker 4: about that, but I think you'll relate with this and
Speaker 4: have something wise to say. You say, letting go isn't
Speaker 4: one step, but many. It's a winding, spiraling process that
Speaker 4: happens on deep levels, and we must begin at the
Speaker 4: beginning by confronting or ambivalence.
Speaker 1: Yet, well, you hear my dog in the background too.
Speaker 3: Your dog is telling us the interview is over.
Speaker 1: My goodness, Yes, And first of all, I don't mind
Speaker 1: it all talking about a book I wrote thirty four
Speaker 1: years ago. Somehow that book has endured and it has
Speaker 1: a kind of universality to it that I am so
Speaker 1: glad people of now new generations are able to relate
Speaker 1: to letting go. Yes, it is not a one time thing.
Speaker 1: Is it. I find that life is like a spiral
Speaker 1: and you just go round and round, but you're always
Speaker 1: going in the right direction, hopefully. So it's that two
Speaker 1: steps forward, one step backward kind of thing. And you know,
Speaker 1: you go around and every time you make the loop,
Speaker 1: you learn and you learn and you learn, and you
Speaker 1: fall down a lot and you grasp again. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's just part of life. I suppose, at least it
Speaker 1: is for me, and I have to let go over
Speaker 1: and over and over. But the miracle, the mystery is
Speaker 1: that somehow, as you do this, it transforms you over
Speaker 1: a period of time and the most subtle places inside
Speaker 1: of us, so that you realize you have changed one day,
Speaker 1: and it's not overnight. It's a long process.
Speaker 4: I think that's beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Well, Sue, thank you
Speaker 4: so much for taking the time to come on. I
Speaker 4: have really enjoyed this conversation.
Speaker 1: I have enjoyed it also, Eric, thank you, Yes.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
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