Sue Monk Kidd: Connections, Travel Near and Far
“Remember that little flame on the Easter candle. Cup your heart around it. Your darkness will become the light.”—Sue Monk Kidd, “A Journal Entry” in When the Heart Waits: Spiritual Direction for Life’s Sacred Questions (HarperOne, 1992).
joanna blue mosque
I wish I could have Sue Monk Kidd’s book When the Heart Waits: Spiritual Direction for Life’s Sacred Questions with me and read it when meeting with other spiritual friends. I hope to remember her message about waiting. Many friends coming for direction live in the biblical tradition of waiting called the “night sea journey”: Jonah in the belly of the whale, Christ in the tomb, or Joseph in the well where there is only darkness.
I hope to remember Kidd’s phrase when we have difficulty letting go: “Put on your courage suit” and cross the bridge of letting go.
I began this book on Maundy Thursday in the Chapel of Repose with the Reserved Sacrament. I ended it in Greece with my husband, my daughter, and her husband in the fourth week of Easter as we overlooked the Acropolis.
Kidd’s later books are about her trips to Greece, especially with her daughter, and becoming more connected to the feminine part of herself and God. My daughter and I wrote a book together as Kidd and her daughter did—so much serendipity.
Kidd ends her book by describing a drawing of a mother and child that came out of her true inner self, based on a sketch she made at Kanuga, the home of my spiritual direction class. Several years ago, on Mother’s Day, we dedicated a sculpture of a mother and child in the garden next to St. Luke’s chapel that my husband had commissioned.
More connections.
As you can see, Sue Monk Kidd gets my attention and connects to me. So today, as I relive journeys, I try to follow more of Kidd’s direction, stay in the moment, and feed my soul real food instead of junk food.
I am remembering past trips to ancient and nearer parts of the world we both visited with our daughter and granddaughters on land and sea, where we learned, surrounded by those we love and away from our busy world, to let go into the moment.
Retake a virtual trip in your mind to a country you once visited with loved ones, perhaps carrying a book by a favorite author. Maybe you traveled to England, Italy, China, Spain, Germany, Greece, Norway, France, South Africa, Canada, Mexico, or Israel.
I remember Buechner’s words in Wishful Thinking: “There are two ways of remembering. One is to make an excursion from the living present back into the dead past. The old sock remembers how things used to be when you and I were young, Maggie.
The other way is to summon the dead past back into the living present. The young widow remembers her husband, and he is there beside her. When Jesus said, ‘Do this in remembrance of me’ (1 Corinthians 11:24), he was not prescribing a periodic slug of nostalgia.”
Give thanks for those you love who have traveled with you. Give thanks for writers who speak to your soul. Pray for that author, your family, and for people in that country to remain safe, especially the families of Ukraine and the Middle East.
Joanna joannaseibert.com. https://www.joannaseibert.com/