A new book

My good friend sent me a book quite unexpectedly. When the Heart Waits, by Sue Monk Kidd, from 1990. Seventeen years ago this book came out! And it is about mid-life crisis and I am well into Third Age. Hmmm . . . but I dipped into it, because my good friend is never wrong. I surfaced at page 31, and did not pick up my constant-companion-murder-mystery until I finished the book a week later. How well this book fits me!

It makes my long (nearly three years now) wait and my complaints about darkness, and nothing happening, and vital-life-in-hiding take on meaning. I always loved St. John of the Cross and his dark night of the soul, and wonder why I did not keep that book. Suddenly my long sojourn in what I have been calling "a small, dark place" made sense. Kidd quotes Eliot, "Four Quartets"; I did my B.A. thesis on this.

I found meaning. I found direction. I settled down. I felt calm. I started opening the book to random pages. I say "thank you" to my good friend.

Onward.