Good morning…
“It’s bittersweet,” my heart thinks as I quietly put away the mugs, the teas, the snack bowls that have rested regularly on our foyer table, welcoming women into our home week after week. “It is bittersweet to end another winter/spring season of learning.” Yes, my schedule will breathe a little more freely and, yes, I will miss these soul seekers who help to draw out the True Self from one another. The best parts of each of us rise up to resonate, as we collaborate as life long learners.
Again I flip through the final chapter of Sue Monk Kidd’s When The Heart Waits, and I revisit the section entitled: GIFTS OF THE SOUL.
- Delight: When the True Self breaks through, a new and impassioned approach to life often makes itself known. (184)
- The Mothering of God: One of the most beautiful gifts of the soul that I discovered was coming to experience God not only through the image of father but also through the image of mother. (God keeps getting bigger!) (188)
- A Return to the Earth: One of the more unexpected gifts that I began to discover was the wedding of my soul to creation…a deepening sense of oneness with the earth as the place where God cradles and grows life, where everything is contained, connected, and nourished. (190)
- Attunement: One of the more delicate gifts of the soul…is a refined attunement to the here-and-now. We learn how to be genuinely present to life. (92)
- Authenticity: The spiritual journey is one of becoming real. Waiting can offer us the gift of authenticity. It can help us give birth to a new way of being true to ourselves. (196)
- Compassion: As the True Self is born within us, the initial movement of the soul if from the collective “they” to the ground of an authentic “I.” That’s holy ground, yet God calls us to a ground even holier: God called us from the authentic “I” toward a compassionate “we.” (200)
As a beloved season ends before a fresh season begins, might we notice these six gifts of the soul expanding in our lives?
We journey through life’s seasons together, studying wisdom sprouting from biblical roots …so we’ll know how to live well and right, to understand what life means and where it’s going; to explore a manual for living, for learning what’s right and just and fair; to teach the inexperienced the ropes and give our young people a grasp on reality. There’s something here also for seasoned men and women, still a thing or two for the experienced to learn — fresh wisdom to probe and penetrate, the rhymes and reasons of wise men and women (Proverbs 1:1b-6, MSG).
As I take time to tidy, do you understand more completely why my heart feels bittersweet?
…Sue…
