The One You Feed - How to Tap Into the Longings of the Heart with Sue Monk Kidd

Episode Date: March 15, 2024

Sue Monk Kidd’s journey into the core of her spiritual life began with a profound realization about attention. As she delves into a parable, she was struck by the idea that what we pay attention to ultimately shapes and defines us. This insight sparked a deep reflection on the pivotal role of attention in her spiritual path. In this episode, Eric and Sue discuss some of the themes of her latest novel, including how to tap into the longings of the heart. They also explore how these common themes from her work show up in our everyday lives.In this episode, you will be able to: Embrace the largeness within yourself and unlock your true potential for personal growth and fulfillment Understand the personal genius within everyone and discover how it can propel you towards success and happiness Overcome fear and harness the power of being seen and heard in a way that aligns with your authentic self Nurture creativity as a form of motherhood, fostering new ideas and inspiration to bring forth into the world Experience the transformative power of confronting pain, and learn how it can lead to profound healing and spiritual growth To learn more, click here!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What you pay attention to is what will either devour you or save you. I think we become what we pay attention to. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.

Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor,

what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really No Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We hope you'll enjoy this episode from the archive. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Sue Monk Kidd, who was raised in the small town of Sylvester, Georgia, a place that deeply influenced the writing of her first novel, The Secret Life of Bees. Her book, When the Heart Waits, from 1990, has become a touchstone on contemplative spirituality. Sue serves on the Writers' Council

for Poets and Writers and is well known for her work in feminist theology. Her new book is a novel called The Book of Longings. Hi, Sue. Welcome to the show. Thank you. It's nice to be here. It's a real pleasure to have you on. We're going to discuss your latest book, The Book of Longings, here in a couple moments, but let's start like we always do with the parable of the two wolves. There's a grandmother who's talking with her granddaughter, and she says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the granddaughter stops and she thinks about it for a second.

She looks up at her grandmother and she says, well, grandmother, which one wins? And the grandmother says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do? The moment that I read that parable, I thought instantly of what feels like to me the core of my spiritual life. Once the Dalai Lama said that he could sum up his in two words, which was kindness, or maybe that's one word, kindness. And I thought that I was too complicated to do this, but I'm going to try to sum mine up in two words, and that is pay attention. So that said to me, this parable, that what you pay attention to is what will either devour you or save you. And I think we become what we pay attention to. So it's a very important aspect of how I approach my life.

And it's a constant practice, really. So there's two wolves in me, too. And I certainly feel them pulling me two ways about this. But I guess for me, it's all about the focusing on the attention I give to this moment, to this world, to my work, to my life, to the lives around me, to the divine in everything. I love that. I think that's a beautiful way to start off. I do a course called Spiritual Habits, and attention is the first principle. It's like the place it all starts. What am I paying attention to day to day, moment to moment? So I'm right on board with you there. Your latest book is called The Book of

Longings, and it's an incredible novel. It's about a woman named Anna who is a very brave, ambitious, and creative woman in the first century who becomes the wife of Jesus. And I would say the book is about both of their journeys to becoming who they were meant to be. And it is really a beautiful book, like all of your books, but I really, really enjoyed reading it. Thank you very much. That's what an author likes to hear. Thank you. Yeah. And I hope that summary works for a very short, short summary of the book. And I don't want to give away any of the key parts of the book, but I'm going to pull out certain aspects of it that I think that we could talk about that align with what we talk about here

on the show. And the first I'd like to talk about is, and am I saying her name right? Is it Anna or is it Anna? How do you, in your mind, how is it pronounced? In my mind, it's Anna. I think that's a very Southern way of saying it. So I'll go with either one though. On a slightly off note, as I do with most guests, I've been immersing myself in your work recently. And I read the book of longings and I mentioned to you that I also read your book when the heart waits Waits, Spiritual Direction for Life's Sacred Questions. But my girlfriend and I also listened to Secret Life of Bees on our long drive from Atlanta to Columbus. And she was so struck by how that book brought her back to the childhood her mother described. And her mother has Alzheimer's, so there's a lot going on there. It was a really

emotional and beautiful book. So when you mentioned a Southern way of saying it, it really brought that up in me that we did do all that recently and how Southern to her some of your work is and really brings her back to an old South of her mother's childhood. Yeah, that's nice to hear. This latest book, Anna, has a prayer that she says throughout the book. It's kind of her prayer. And I'm going to read it, and I thought we could just talk about it for a moment. And that prayer is, Lord, our God, hear my prayer, the prayer of my heart.

Bless the largeness inside of me, no matter how I fear it. Where did that come from for you? And what's the meaning of it for you in your life? Well, this largeness, this was Anna's way of describing something that I thoroughly believe in for every person. And that is a kind of particular genius that dwells in every person. I think of this largeness as it can be our passion, our deepest authentic voice. However we think of what our largeness is, I think our mission is to try and bring that forth in ourselves for not just the fulfillment of ourselves, but for the world around us. But I do believe Anna is trying to talk about her own particular genius here. And her genius is something she longs for, which is to write the lost stories of women and to have a voice in the world.

Now, this resonates with me because it's very similar to my own longings. And Anna, in many ways, reflects a lot of myself, I guess. I long to write the stories of women. I long to have a voice in the world. And these things live in me. And I think this is probably the largeness I was given. So when I first decided I wanted to write fiction, I was in my 40s. And I remember I was in Greece on a trip with my daughter and friends, and we went to this little convent, Greek Orthodox convent, and the little nun, because she was, I say little because she was 4'11", at least. We like our guests to come and stand under this tree where there was an icon of the Virgin Mary sitting in the branches and to ask the prayer that is at the bottom of their heart. Now you see how this sort of turned up in my novel.

When she said that, the first thing that came to me was my prayer at the bottom of my heart is I want to be a novelist. I had not written fiction up until that point, but I longed to. And so that's what I said. I think for Anna, she looked deep into herself and came up with this prayer. And I believe this is something women long to do, to find that prayer in themselves and that largeness, their own genius. I love that. Bless the largeness inside of me, no matter how I fear it. And I think there's an inverse to that. Sometimes we fear it because we worry what it's going to look like if it shows up into the outside world. What is bringing this largeness out of me going to mean to the life around me? And then there's another way, and this is, I often hear this from a lot of listeners or people who I coach, who also fear that it's not

really there. Yes. There is a lot of fear around this. Just believing that we have this aspect of ourselves, something to offer the world and to offer ourselves is sometimes hard for people. So it requires just really listening and believing and taking a leap somehow. Much of the fear has to do with whether how this will be met in the world around us. It rearranges not just your life, but the lives of people around you who may not wish to see your largeness because it is somehow inconvenient for them. And I think there's a fear of just being visible, of being audible in the world. I'm suddenly thinking of one of my favorite poets. I like to read poetry. I can't write it, but I love to read it. It's my scriptures, I guess. David White,

and a line that he writes is, let's see, revelation can be terrible, knowing you can never hide your voice again. It is terrible in some way to think about, and being visible and being audible is a choice, and it's part of the fear of the largeness, I suppose. The other thing that I thought was so beautiful that you mentioned there was really the love story between Anna and Jesus, which is certainly going to be controversial, but I don't want to focus on that aspect of it. What is so beautiful is the way that they nurture the largeness in each other. And as you said just a moment ago, sometimes the largeness coming out of us can be inconvenient

for those around us. And it's a beautiful story between the two of them because each of their largeness is certainly inconvenient for the other at points, and yet they nurture and bless it in each other. It's a really beautiful thing. I wanted so much for this relationship to be a great love story. I wanted them to model in a way some of what's possible in a marriage. There is a moment in a scene in the novel in which they tell one another that they bless the largeness in one another. And I think that is just a beautiful thing in a relationship whether it's a marriage or friendship or whatever to just bless the largeness in another person we need that not only from within ourselves but it helps us to believe in it if someone else can see it and bless it. And yes, they do that for one another.

And it is inconvenient at times. Anna particularly struggles to bring it forth, not because she has any lack of believing it or even wanting to bring it forth. It's about the culture. It's about the religious dictates and limitations and just how the world is arranged against women. And she has to work very hard to do it. And even Jesus cannot overcome all of that for her. And there is some conflict in their marriage around this, which I think brings some humanity into it.

I agree. And what I think is also interesting is if we had flipped the story and we had been able to perhaps be inside Jesus's head more, we might have seen more of how it suffered and how it caused him to suffer to be apart from her. Yes, they did have long stretches of being apart as he was an itinerant, in my version, he's this itinerant stonemason carpenter who has to find work outside of Nazareth at times leading up to these years of his public ministry. So I was really working in those years that are unknown about him, that we have no record. And I was fascinated with the idea of what was an 18-year-old Jesus like or a 22-year-old Jesus? And was he following the Jewish ethic of being married or what was he like? So those questions, the what if about that was what drove the story for me, but mostly

the what ifs about Anna, because while Jesus is a big character, it's her story thoroughly. That's right. That's right. It totally is. And the love between the two of them makes me think of a Rilke quote in Letters to a Young Poet, where he's describing what mature love might look like. And he says, love consists of this, two solitudes that meet, protect, and greet each other. And I just love that. And I just felt like that was kind of what their love was. They protected the greatness in each other. Yes, actually, that is one of my favorite quotes. And it was a wedding gift to me from my husband. He gave me, and this, I will not tell you how long ago it was because it was just long ago. He gave me a little box and inside of it were three links of chain. And he had that verse from the poem inside of it

written underneath the chain. And I thought, oh boy, I've gotten chain as a wedding gift. This is like chain link. What is this? And he said, he was a psychotherapist. He's retired now. But he said, well, the chains on each end, that's my life and this is your life. But we're joined in the middle by this common love and union. But we each have our separate lives, our solitudes. And I have kept that chain until I gave it to my daughter on her wedding day and said, continue that. That is really beautiful. Yeah.

Yeah. So I want to move on to talking a little bit about a description in the book of God that I love. And this is Anna speaking. She says, It reassured me suddenly to think of God not as a person like ourselves, but as an essence that lived everywhere. God could be love, as Jesus believed. For me, he would be I am who I am, the beingness in our midst. And I just think that is so lovely and so aligns with my idea of the divine as being this essence that lives everywhere.

Yes, well, me too. There is an evolving concept of God for Anna in this story. evolving concept of God for Anna in this story. And certainly, I have done this throughout my life. My ideas about God have changed and transformed, and I hope expanded and expanded. And this is once again happening for Anna. And early in the book, when she meets Jesus for, I think it's the second time, they have this conversation. And Anna says something like, why can't we free God? And that is what's happening here, I think. herself from these concepts of God that are narrow and limiting and very, and I say this very purposefully, man-made. And she's allowing herself to reimagine God for herself. That's a very mystical standpoint, actually, very individuated kind of thing to do rather than to take an ecclesiastical approach.

But God is not a person, she says, because they can be so disappointing. But I think of God like that as well. I am who I am, the beingness in our midst. God, for me, is both imminent in dwelling in this world and in matter, but also transcendent. And yet I have to recognize, Eric, that if we're going to relate to a divine presence, we somehow need to personalize it. And it's very hard to relate to a beingness in our midst. So I totally get that people want to relate to imagery of the divine. And it's a way of connecting as long as we understand that there is a God beyond our concept of God. Yeah, what you said there just brought up a whole bunch of different

ideas in my mind. One makes me think of in Hinduism, they say there's sort of four routes to God. And, you know, one of the routes is called jnana yoga, which is more knowledge, but it's more knowledge of what you just said. God is sort of this unified field of being or this ground of being. But then the next type is bhakti yoga, which is love. And it's really about, you know, for people who need more of an image. And that's really what, you know, a lot of people think Hinduism is all these different gods, but really all it is is those various gods appear as a way of seeing an aspect of God that we can visualize and grab onto. It's a facet of the Godhead that's behind it all.

Yes, and it's amazing to me as I was writing this book how our own lens that we look at God through or even at Jesus through now is so dependent on just our own history, our own proclivities, our own need. God becomes somehow what we need God to be in some very anthropomorphic way. But God is beyond all of our concepts, I think, in my humble estimation. And that is what Anna is trying to say here for her. She is freeing God, and it is the ground of her being. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast,

our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you, and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth.

Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all.

Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com.

And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason Bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So at another point in the book, Mary, Jesus's mother, is talking about Jesus, and she says he learned well, and his suffering didn't harden him. It's always a marvel when one's pain doesn't settle into bitterness, but brings forth kindness instead. And I love that line. And I bring it up because one of the things that I talk about on the show a lot, and it's one of the questions I ask guests a lot is, what is it that causes some people to grow from difficulty and to become more compassionate, beautiful, strong, wise, and other people become bitter from it. And I was just kind of curious, this line brought that right up for me as suffering didn't harden him. It brought forth kindness. What do you think are the aspects that cause us to be able to grow from difficulty and pain versus becoming bitter by it? What comes to me is the word vulnerable, a vulnerability. It's very hard to take off all

that armor, that ego armor, I guess, and just be vulnerable to learn from something to say, this happened and I want to grow from it. You know, in The Secret Life of Bees, I had this character, T-Ray, who was the father of my main character, Lily, and he is the example of the opposite. I mean, he became embittered and hardened by the circumstances that had happened to him of losing his wife. And it followed him all the days of his life. And he grew harder and harder and your heart shrinks and shrinks. And then it's, you know, it becomes more difficult to kind of break out of that. I guess the mystery is to allow ourselves in the moment to just be broken by it, to just be broken. And in that vulnerability

to choose love, compassion, and it requires a real relinquishment of a lot of our ego to do that, I guess. But, you know, I see that as what a large part of life is about, is bringing the ego into some kind of relationship, subservient relationship, to one's divine self, that nature of oneself. So it's a long and difficult journey. difficult journey, though. Yeah. And I told you in the introduction that I also read your book, When the Heart Waits, Spiritual Direction for Life's Sacred Questions. And I said I would bring these two books together. And here goes attempt number one. Because in that book, you're describing having a conversation with your counselor. And the counselor says, the pain won't kill you, but running from it might. And I wonder if that's somewhat of another way of saying what you just said. Well, that's interesting.

Yes, it probably is. I do remember that very well. That's a lesson that Yaltha, my character in the Book of Longings, also tells Lily. She says it like this, let life be life. And terrible things are going to happen. And beautiful things are going to happen. I think Frederick Buechner said it like that.

Terrible things will happen. Beautiful things will happen. But don't be afraid. Life will be life. And we just have to have a radical acceptance of that and not run from it and just take it all in, the pain, the beauty, the terror, all of it, live it, and do our best to become more compassionate because of it. I was about to go right to those words from her next. Going back to when the heart waits, you followed the line I just read with this idea that

avoiding pain rather than having the discipline and courage to confront it and live it through only compounds suffering in the long run. And when you mentioned your character T-Ray, not only did the pain harden him, the suffering that he endured in the long run. And when you mentioned your character T-Ray, not only did the pain harden him, the suffering that he endured in the long run was so vast because he couldn't face his pain. That's right. And the suffering that will come out of that will be vastly worse than just going through it at the moment. I think that healing, the path to healing is right through the wound. So you just turn and move through the wound and process it and move on. There's a certain metabolizing that our soul, I often think of the soul as having its own little digestive system, you know, and you have to metabolize and digest these things that happen to us and move through our soul and let it go.

And then we're freed somehow. Yeah, I love that idea, the digestive system of the soul. That's great. that idea of the digestive system of the soul. That's great. Another line from When the Heart Waits is that we haven't been willing to face the fact that while the spiritual journey is joyous and full, it's also long and hard. It asks much. Yes. And that was part of that book was rediscovering for myself the contemplative nature of waiting in the transformation. myself, the contemplative nature of waiting in the transformation. There's just this period of time that is required. And who wants to sit still for all of this? I mean, particularly today, I wrote that book 34 years ago. And I was, you know, talking about how fast paced everything

was and how busy we were. And oh, my fax machines and all of this well my grandson doesn't even know what a fax machine is we have so moved beyond that and i think the contemplative nature of what we need now in order to transform is being lost to have time for the soul to digest. We have to cultivate something like paying attention and moments in order to actually do that. Wordsworth called them spots of time in his poem, The Prelude. We just need spots of time where we can be a refuge from ourselves, from those driven selves we are, and just be silent and still. I really believe in that. Of course, there's some, you know, nascent monk in me, I guess, and there's my name right there. I'm living up to it. But I need that in my life.

And it seems harder and harder to come by. You feel like you're just besieged somehow. So I saw When the Heart Waits as a rediscovery of those kinds of moments that allowed me to be and to transform. Yeah, you're right. And in that book, you do mention, you know, you refer to us as becoming quickaholics, you know, and again, that was 35 years ago. And if we were quickaholics then, I don't know what the word is for us now. Yeah, crazed, maybe. Crazed, yeah, yeah. Another idea that comes up in the new book, The Book of Longing, is this idea of mothering.

What does it mean to be a mother? And Yaltha, who is Anna's aunt, who we've already quoted a couple times as having some very wise things to say, says to her at some point, Anna, I don't doubt you should give yourself to motherhood. My only question is what you're meant to mother. Tell me more about that. only question is what you're meant to mother. Tell me more about that. Well, Anna is not one who wants to have actual physical children. She just knows that this is not meant for her. And so Yaltha poses this question to her, what is it you're meant to mother? And it's kind of revelatory for Anna because she hadn't thought of it like this. And now we're back to what we were discussing before, your largeness.

Are we not meant to mother that? That is to incubate it, to nurture it, to bring it forth, to labor for it, then to take it into the world and stand by it. So this is what I've tried to do with my writing, is to mother it. And I think of it as a real important, well, not maybe as important as my own two children, but important in the generation of my soul to be generative and to bring forth what I want to bring forth in the world. So for me, that's like a mothering of something else. Right, right. And I was struck by this idea of mothering.

I was also struck by how a lot of mothering is waiting. You know, your book, When the Heart Waits, we've referenced a couple times, and I was sort of struck by how, you know, particularly in the process we think of as giving birth, right? Most of the time, that process is waiting. Yes. And again, it's such a hard thing to do. And I don't think sometimes women particularly might think of mothering, say, a creative work as motherhood. But I wanted to plant that idea, just that remembering that we have this inside of us that we can grow from within and bring forth without. And this is not limited just to women. I think men can mother to what is in them to bring forth. And I think of the mothering aspect of God. And even the creative life to me has so much to do with darkness and silence and

growing something inside that is true and real and the labor and the waiting for it all. So I see just the creative part of life is very like a dark Madonna. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal?

The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by.

Mr. Brian Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel

might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really, No, Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

say. We seem to have focused so much on exuberant beginnings and victorious endings that we've forgotten about the slow, sometimes torturous unraveling of God's grace that takes place in the middle places. And I love that idea, whether we're thinking of birth, you know, there's these exuberant beginnings, like I'm pregnant and victorious endings. I just gave birth or in writing a novel. oh, I've got the idea, is the exuberant beginning, and the victorious ending is, oh, the book is published, but there's all this middle place in both those, which can be, you know, as you said, sometimes slow, sometimes torturous. Exactly, and that middle place, wow, that's life. That's real life. Wow. That's life. That's real life. It's getting up every day and having the courage to choose compassion or pay attention or write bravely. It's the work. It's the sitting in

the chair. It's just life itself. And I think learning to love that again and to value that and not see it as just passing time or trying to skip over it to get from here to there, but that's where our life is. And actually the creation happens in those moments that we're not even totally aware of. It's just I come into my study every morning and labor away. And then, okay, four and a half years later, there is the book. Is that your routine, a daily writing routine? You go in and you spend the time working regardless of how it's going? Yes. and you spend the time working regardless of how it's going?

Yes. I will have to say that after I finish a book, I generally take some time away and let myself be fallow for a while and give time for some new creative idea to sprout or grow because the ground needs to sit a while for me. But, yeah, I come in every day. And I mean, I'm here for hours and hours. My husband will send the dog in after me with the toy to play with. And then I know, okay, I've been in too long.

But I get lost in this realm and I identify with my characters. And I love the actual writing of the book more than I like having written it, frankly. I just like the process. There's another part that you mentioned in When the Heart Waits, and you say this is an important principle in waiting, coming to the enormous realization that there are seed forces within us, the potential for wholeness, life with a capital L is fully here. We don't have to go out in conquest and make it happen. We can simply let it happen consciously. And so I think that both those things are there. You're describing a process of showing up every day to try and birth it, but also realizing that there is something within us. And this is back to the very early idea of Anna and

the largeness inside of her, that this process of bringing something to be is both an active and a passive is the wrong word because you describe waiting as not being passive, but there's a more active and perhaps a less active. That's not very articulate, but you get the idea of where I'm going with this. Well, contemplation is both. It has an active part, and I guess we would say, let's not use passive then. Let's say patience, nice, quiet, still, the being, cultivating that sense of just being. I tell you what, I call it sometimes loitering. And it's true. There is just something very spiritual and deep about loitering well or loitering consciously. And the real key for me in waiting or in being still or patient is doing it consciously,

doing it with attention and paying attention to what's the process inside of us and what we're bringing forth and so forth. So I have a strong desire sometimes to just go out and do and do, and then I have to return to this silent place in myself. My words matter to me so much. I need silence beneath them in order to have the best words that I have out there, if that makes sense. They're grounded with silence. So there's a poem by Mae Sarton. Boy, I am really quoting poets today. I don't know why I'm doing that. But Mae Sarton talked

about a poem called The Old Woman. And she said, Old Woman, I meet you deep inside myself. You are the silence beneath my words. And when I heard that, I thought, we all need that kind of silence beneath us to hold us. And that's the waiting. Do you try and take time aside for silence every day, a meditative or a prayer practice, or is it something that you come to a little bit more organically? I used to do a very formal mindfulness meditation and I still do it from time to time, but in a more, as you said, organic way. I think of it as a spirituality of naturalness, maybe. I mean,

I want my spiritual life and my ordinary life to just be integrated so that it all becomes a prayer. a prayer. And Thomas Merton, the monk, Trappist monk, was really important in my formation. And he said, you know, the birds are my prayer. The wind in the trees is my prayer, for God is all in all. I liked that idea of just going about my ordinary day, doing my thing, but paying attention and understanding that there's this spark in it. So I guess it's not so formal anymore as it used to be, but maybe one day I will be able to have it all be a prayer. That's the goal is the integration of that and that ability to be more present as we go about our lives. I mean, for me, that's the whole point of taking time aside to sit specifically is so that more of the moments of my day are imbued with that stillness and that

quiet. And the quote that you just read by Merton reminded me of one of my favorite quotes from an old Zen master, Zen master Dogen. And he said, enlightenment is intimacy with all things. And that is just resonates with a Merton quote. Yes. So the last thing I'd like to ask you about, and we are near the end of our time here, is another part from When the Heart Waits, because I thought this was a really beautiful idea. And I'd like you just to say a little bit more about it, even though I'm asking you to quote or go back to a book that you wrote 30 years ago. Sorry about that. But I think you'll relate with this and have something wise to say. You say, letting go isn't one step, but many.

It's a winding spiraling process that happens on deep levels. And we must begin at the beginning by confronting our ambivalence. Yeah. Well, you hear my dog in the background too. Your dog is telling us the interview is over. Oh my goodness. Yes. And first of all, I don't mind at all talking about a book I wrote 34 years ago. Somehow that book has endured and it has a kind of universality to it that I am so glad people of now new generations are able to relate to. Letting go, yes, it is not a one-time thing, is it? I find that life is like a spiral and you just go round and round, but you're always going in the right direction, hopefully. So it's that two steps forward, one step backward kind of thing. And, you know, you go around and every time you make the loop, you learn and you learn and you learn. And you fall down a lot and you grasp again.

I mean, that's just part of life, I suppose. At least it is for me. And I have to let go over and over and over. But the miracle, the mystery is that somehow as you do this, it transforms you over a period of time in the most subtle places inside of us so that you realize you have changed one day. And it's not overnight. It's a long process. I think that's beautiful. Beautiful, beautiful. Well, Sue, thank you so much for taking the time to come on. I have really enjoyed this conversation. I have enjoyed it also, Eric. Thank you.

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