My favorite novel by Sue Monk Kidd yet and her latest—The Invention of Wings. After I finished it I was tempted to turn right back to chapter one and start it once more.
Many moons ago, I said I was going to begin sharing about my journey guides and spiritual midwives—authors who have led me down new paths and aided me, creating the space for new ideas, experiences, and ways of being to be born.
One of those journey guides and spiritual midwives is author Sue Monk Kidd.
The first book I read by Sue (we’re on a first name basis, obviously) was in fact not her breakthrough novel and bestseller, The Secret Life of Bees (still $3.99 on Kindle!), though it had been published for many years at the time. No—the first book I read by Sue was a breakthrough of a different sort—her feminist memoir, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter: A Woman’s Journey from Christian Tradition to the Sacred Feminine.
It was the summer that I became a reader—an avid one, at least. That summer at camp, I stole as many moments as I could to read the pile of books stored in the trunk of my car—the make-shift library for counselors who move from cabin to cabin each week.
With each book finished and neatly returned to my trunk-turned-library, something within me shifted. New questions were being asked without need for answers. Hidden voices were growing louder; unseen parts of me were finally being recognized.
No book had a greater impact on me that summer, however, than Sue’s book. A friend let me borrow it as school ended that spring, and I finally picked it up during the final weeks of summer, not really knowing what it was about or how it would impact me.
Though I didn’t resonate as fully with every piece in the book then as I do now—seven years and many realizations later—a shift undoubtedly took place within me that summer at camp.
I know this to be true because it was at the end of that summer that I crossed out those verses in Timothy telling women to be silent, and no longer sang worship songs which referred to God in the masculine form (and let me say—I deeply enjoyed the rebellion).
Instead, I began dreaming of rituals pregnant with meaning and blankets spread out in a field under a full moon with candles lit, surrounded by a circle of trees representing vibrant women who knew their strength as image-bearers. (You’ll have to read the book, I guess.)
I never made it to that circle of trees—that summer, anyway. I returned to school with a new part of me awakened—some of my true self revealed—and it certainly sparked new explorations of spirituality. You could even say that it was that following fall that I stepped into my identity as a seeker. However, I wasn’t in an environment open to much seeking, and it would be many years until I picked up a book by Sue Monk Kidd again and was called to remember.
Is it any surprise, though, that the book that drew me in again to her work four years later was her pilgrimage memoir, Traveling with Pomegranates? Back with Sue again and in an environment that encouraged curiosity, I devoured her wisdom. And it is no wonder—her story is my story, just as the stories she weaves in her novels are the stories of women everywhere.
Though the story has undoubtedly evolved over the years, to me it seems that each of her books—whether memoir or novel—tell a version of that journey of self discovery shared in The Dance of the Dissident Daughter—from “Christian tradition to Sacred feminine,” from expectation to empowerment.
Because of this, I will forever read her works and breathe in her wisdom over and over, for it is a truth that I need to birth anew each day.
PS: A little bit of Sue Monk Kidd from one of my favorite shows, Super Soul Sunday:
GO FURTHER…
Have you read any of Sue Monk Kidd’s books? Which is your favorite?