We’ve underestimated the presence of grace among us. We’ve built up a callus over it with our cynicism and the religious certainties that render us incapable of being surprised.
If we’re to wait, we must relearn the extravagance of grace. – Sue Monk Kidd
I’ve been blogging my way through Sue Monk Kidd’s 1990 book about midlife, When The Heart Waits: Spiritual Direction For Life’s Sacred Questions. Click here to read earlier posts in the series.
This chapter focuses on getting and staying still when our instincts tell us to do something – anything to put an end to the disorientation of this life transition. A gripe: though she uses some big terms like ‘Divine center’ and ‘grace’, she offers only cursory explanations of these terms, which can leave some readers with the task of filling in the blanks. Certainly it is possible to infer meaning from context, but these concepts are too big not to clarify her use of them. The mushy, vague spiritual language in the first few pages of this chapter left me a little disoriented.
Thankfully, her focus becomes somewhat tighter as she unfolds the notion of cocooning with God through waiting prayer. [Read more]