The Book of Longings

by Sue Monk Kidd

Her mind was an immense feral country that spilled its borders. She trespassed everywhere.

To be ignored, to be forgotten, this was the worst sadness of all.

“A man’s holy of holies contains God’s laws, but inside a woman’s there are only longings.”

It was the most beautiful, wicked blasphemy I’d ever heard. I could not sleep that night for the ecstasy of it.

Return to your longing. It will teach you everything.”

When you love, you remember everything.

Grief and anger streamed from my fingers. The anger made me brave and the grief made me sure.

“Why would God send me a vision if it has no meaning other than what I give to it?” “What if the point of his sending it is to make you search yourself for the answer?”

Our religion might preach love, but it was based on purity. God was holy and pure; therefore we must be holy and pure. But here was a poor mamzer saying God is love; therefore we must be love.

Your moment will come, and when it does, you must seize it with all the bravery you can find. . . . Your moment will come because you’ll make it come.

“We walked all this way and you said nothing.” He smiled. “We walked all this way with you talking.”

I think every pain in this world wants to be witnessed,

“I’m sorry. I tried for so long to belong, to be as they needed me to be. Now I wish to be myself.”

“It’s just that . . . I hoped—” Hearing the quiver in my throat, I stopped. “Tell me. What do you hope?” “I hope for everything.”

I looked at him. I’d held the world too close and it had slipped from my arms.

“May this severing not cut us apart, but bind us together,”

“To avoid a fear emboldens it,” she said.

“Oh, Ana, Ana. When I tell you all shall be well, I don’t mean that life won’t bring you tragedy. Life will be life. I only mean you will be well in spite of it. All shall be well, no matter what.”

“You are very quiet,” Yaltha said, sidling next to me. “Is the library all you hoped?” “It’s a holy of holies,”

A half million scrolls and codices were within these walls, and all but a handful were by men. They had written the known world.

“We will teach you about our God and you will teach us about yours, and together we’ll find the God that exists behind them.”

“What most sets you apart is the spirit in you that rebels and persists. It isn’t the largeness in you that matters most, it’s your passion to bring it forth.”

Where were these disciples of his? The fishermen? The men? Were we women the only ones with hearts large enough to hold such anguish?

Don’t look away. Terrible things will happen now. Unbearable things. Bear it anyway.

We were exhausted, devastated, wishing for the numbness of sleep, but we went on sitting there, reluctant to part, our togetherness like a refuge.

“I don’t mean that life won’t bring you tragedy. I only mean you will be well in spite of it. There’s a place in you that is inviolate. You’ll find your way there, when you need to. And you’ll know then what I speak of.”

Earlier, I recorded exactly where the jars would be buried, writing the location on a sealed scroll that will be passed on within the community after I die. But how long before the scroll is forgotten, before the significance of what’s buried fades?

WHEN I AM DUST, sing these words over my bones: she was a voice.”