"When the Heart Waits" (A Book Review"

Sue Monk Kidd, When the Heart Waits: Spiritual Direction for Life’s Sacred Questions (New York: HarperOne  1990, 2006), 226 pages, notes and a study guide

I've always thought of Sue Monk Kidd as a novelist, even though I was only somewhat familiar with her work.  When I came across this book on spirituality, I was intrigued.   I picked the book up last Spring thinking I would read it during my Sabbatical travels, but at the last minute decided to leave it behind.  It was the book to read after I returned!

Sue writes about what she calls her “winter of discontent.  Others may refer to it as a “mid-life crisis.”  At the beginning of the book, life seems to have lost its meaning for her.  Not knowing what to do or where to turn, she takes a long winter afternoon walk (taking a walk as such a time resonates well with me).  During her walk, she discovers a cocoon, which she becomes the glue for her story as she brings home the stick holding the cocoon and watches and waits until the butterfly appears.  Along the way, she learns a lot about waiting and challenges our society’s demand for immediate results.   Throughout her book, she draws upon natural science (as she links her story into the story of the cocoon), the Bible and the spiritual knowledge from the “great cloud of witnesses” who have gone before us, folk tales and down-home stories.

Some quotes:

Waiting and grace:  “Nor does it mean that the deliberate process of waiting produces grace.  But waiting does provide the time and space necessary for grace to happen.”  (13)

Thoreau:  “Nothing can be more useful to a man than a determination not to be hurried.” (19)

“Creativity flourishes not in certainty but in questions.  Growth germinates not in tent dwellings but in upheaval.  Yet the seduction is always security rather than venturing, instant knowing rather than deliberate waiting.”  (25)

On Weddings:  “Walking an aisle can be a marvelous thing, as long as we acknowledge that the aisle doesn’t end at the altar but goes on winding through life.”  (26)

“One of the mistakes Christians are fond of making is trying to be more spiritual than God.”  -Archbishop William Temple (27)

"I heard Marion Woodman, an expert in addictive behaviors, put it like this: The natural gradient in us is toward growth.  Whatever we use repeatedly and compulsively to stop that growth is our particular addiction.”  (30-31)

“There is more to life than increasing its speed.” –Gandhi (31)

"The pain won’t kill you,” he said, “but running from it might.”  -a counselor (40)

“But the question here is whether we’ve been so busy saving souls that we’ve neglected the unfolding of the God-image within them.”  (49)

“Accomplishments and achievements are well and god, but they need to flow out of a healthy motivation.  Otherwise, when they cease we experience an empty darkness.” (62)

Kierkegaard:  “courage isn’t the absence of despair and fear but the capacity to move ahead in spite of them.” (72)

“Jung once pointed out that religion can easily become a defense against an experience of God.”  (90)

“security was a denial of life.”  -A preacher  (109)

“There should always be more waiting than striving in a Christian’s prayer.”  Evelyn Underhill (123)

“The assumption of spirituality is that always God is doing something before I know it.  So the task is not to get God to do something I think needs to be done, but to become aware of what God is doing so that I can respond to it and participate and take delight in it.”  -Eugene Peterson (129)

“our stories are the best ‘bread’ we can offer one another…”  (154)

“The past is a great place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.”  John Claypool in a sermon (192)