Sunday Serenity #46

This Sunday, like today, is going to be dedicated to reading. I started Sue Monk Kidd's novel, The Mermaid Chair, this afternoon and am enthralled. I'm a hundred pages in. It is the first fiction I've read since Sven III began last Saturday even though I had declared my intention to make sure this time that working on my own stories did not push out all other stories.

Many writers testify to what I have also learned: that reading fiction is a necessary part of the care and feeding of the muse. So, in response to the frustration of the past week's work with my WIP, I decided to spend the weekend reading a novel while giving Ed have unfettered access to the laptop which is a major source of serenity for him.

If I finish the novel, I will probably return to Kidd's memoir, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, which I've been meandering my way through since early December. Both are library books. I think I'm on my third check-out of this one and it is due again Thursday. As is The Mermaid's Chair which I've had checked out a least once before. At least a year ago because it was before the library closure last April.

The memoir deals with Kidd's experience of awakening spiritually and finding the patriarchal straight jacket imposed upon the Christian tradition she had dedicated her life heart and soul to was suddenly intolerable. She chronicles her years long quest to integrate honor of the feminine into her relationship to the sacred. Many of the themes of the memoir underpin the novel.

I am grateful to Bonnie Jacobs for directing me to The Dance of the Dissident Daughter. She thought it might be helpful to me because of my own experience of having jettisoned many of the doctrines of my own faith tradition while struggling to find a foothold on life as I redefined faith itself.

Join us in a moment of serenity.