May 02 2008
Coffee Break 3

Sorry fellas, but this one’s for the women.
Well, okay; you can listen too, I suppose.
But just to warn you, it’s touchy-feely. It’s only about 60 seconds, but that might be 60 seconds too much for you.
Being There, with Sue Monk Kidd.
[Edited to add: If the link doesn't open for you, here is Sue Monk Kidd to your heart's content!]
(And it’s probably because I’m an only child that I woke up doing a Mae West impression. See? People need sisters and brothers. You young parents considering having only one child — let this be a lesson to ya.)
But indeed, amen. Women need to tell their stories, to be heard, and to be validated. Men do, too. And it made me wonder to whom Mary told her story, after she left Elizabeth’s house that day. It might well have been something she kept unto herself.. And what a Story was hers, the poor blessed lass. Perhaps, tho’, she told it to the Magdalen. I hope so.
Never a truer word could be said than that I would be lost without you girls.
take care.
Lucy, edited for you, dear one. I love her too.
Women are the nurturers, as opposed to the hunter-gatherers. As such, we take on Godly/Marian co-creative burdens of worry, fear, joy, exhaustion.. we ponder, plan, nudge, arrange, hope, wait, pray.. and worry. We aren’t debriefed often enough. Sometimes all it takes to erase months of wall-to-wall agonizing or worry, is some lovely woman referring to me, with love, as a ‘numbskull.’
Women are terrific. As 4 of us sprawled in Adirondack chairs around the motel pool one sunny morn after a swim (and/or cannonballs..), we just looked at each other in this moment, and smiled. There was no need for words, and we knew it.
“Being there.” Amen.
I like what Sue Monk Kidd said at the end, about women “listening each other into being”.