Firstlight
Published by: PenguinPages: 240
ISBN13: 978-0143112327
Buy the Book: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, IndieBound, Bookshop.org
Overview
• Published by Guideposts Books, 2006 and Penguin, 2007
“The question of “Who am I?” reverberates quietly in these pages as does a willingness to be known.”
This evocative collection offers readers an intimate glimpse into the early years of Sue Monk Kidd’s journey as both writer and spiritual seeker. The book is compiled from a wide range of inspirational and spiritual writings published over a dozen years in Guideposts magazine, Weavings, and other publications.
Organized around thirteen motifs, such as Awareness, Simplicity of Spirit, Compassion, Severe Grace and Letting Go, the book is interwoven with thoughtful essays on the spiritual life, reflections on a stream of ordinary, sacred moments, and personal stories about the author’s quest for meaning, her years as a young mother and a nurse, her marriage, travels and childhood.
Firstlight draws readers to embrace their own moments of awakening and renews the mystery of being alive in a vividly sacred world.
Praise
"Thoughtful, moving, often luminous meditations on faith, family, death, and love; on compassion, solitude and grace."
—Booklist
"These essays point to Kidd’s desire to pay attention to her soul, a “repository of the inner Divine, the truest part of us,” from which so much of her writing sprang. The subjects have universal appeal… Kidd’s lovely prose, passion for the spiritual life, and early instincts for telling a compelling story should help this book attract a wide readership.”
—Publishers Weekly
Excerpt
From the Introduction
When GuidepostsBooks first approached me about collecting my early inspirational writings into one volume, I was ambivalent. I had no idea then what a remarkable gift this book would become for me. I was only imagining how humbling it could be to read my work from those first, developmental years. What fifty-seven-year-old writer wants to go back and read what she wrote when she was thirty years old? I imagined it would be a little like looking at old photographs of myself in a forgotten album and being appalled at my hairstyles, wondering why I’d chosen a bouffant or why bell-bottoms had seemed like a good idea. I thought about the stories and meditations I’d composed all those years ago on a portable typewriter in a corner of the family den as I jumped up every five minutes to tend to my toddlers. Would I read them and wince at certain sentences or wonder why I’d thought it was a good idea to write about the death of my daughter’s goldfish or an encounter with an old woman on a sand dune?