In Firstlight, bestselling author Sue Monk Kidd offers readers an intimate glimpse into the early years of her journey as both writer and spiritual seeker.

Drawn from the author's early writings for Guideposts and, to a lesser extent, other publications, this selection of personal reflections and essays is organized around thirteen spiritual motifs and interwoven to create a compelling narrative about the author's spiritual awakening.

Included are writings about the author's multiple roles as mother, daughter, wife, nurse, and writer. There are recollections about her extensive travels and reflections on her childhood and marriage. And there are musings on a stream of ordinary moments--watching a bird feeder, a homeless man, a golf tournament-- all of whih added richness and meaning to the author's journey.

I just purchased this title for a friend who is retiring. The book is full of uplifting and thought-provoking essays and personal experiences that will beg to be read over and over. I was surprised to learn that Sue Monk Kidd (Secret Life of Bees and Mermaid's Chair)wrote for Guidepost Magazine, and this is a compilation of many of those selections.

Firstlight by Sue Monk Kidd is a book I return to over and over. It contains a number of essays she wrote when in her thirties for the spiritual magazine, Guideposts. In her late twenties, early thirties the author seriously began to examine the reality of her inner life, the meaning and purpose of her life, and become serious about being a writer. Not surprisingly, when Guideposts asked that she assemble her essays into a book, Mrs. Kidd had her doubts that her writing from that period in her life would still have merit and represent her as she is today.

But these are beautiful essays, each one. They are not outdated, nor do they reveal an immaturity that might well have existed when she wrote them. What raises her writing above the numerous spiritual books published today is her focus on stories. She expresses her spiritual wisdom in the form of stories, and her stories are both insightful and touching as well as expressed with a directness and clarity of style that makes them irresistible.

Kidd is not a preacher; she is a born storyteller and a born writer. She believes that telling stories and spirituality are inextricably bound together, that delving into the mysterious interior realm of her soul is the very source of her creativity. She explains that all this began for her when reading Thomas Merton's autobiographical book, The Seven Storey Mountain, that this book had "a life-altering effect on me when I read it at the age of twenty-nine," and that it was this book that led her to become a writer.

She believes that "creativity is essentially a spiritual experience, a conversation between my soul and me." She tells us of her "raw longing for the Divine," her "irrepressible hunger for that deepest thing in myself." She dedicates herself to the articulation of her spiritual quest. A difficult feat and one in which she triumphs. Her subject, broadly speaking, is the soul, the spirit of existence that is called by many names in different cultures but is in essence nameless. It is her belief in the inextricable interaction between the spiritual and the creative that speaks to me, that opens me to her writing and to the person she is. Her philosophy serves as roadmap for me into my own creativity, which is often as elusive as the wind.

The question to which the title of her book refers is the vulnerability in all of us that can lead to the illumination of who we are, perhaps even how we wish to change. She suggests that we try to find the moment, and perhaps more than one moment, when our hearts first opened, when an experience became the "Firstlight" that touched us in a way to perhaps change us forever, to start us on our own path of communion with something greater than ourselves, a path of revelation that connected us to our creativity, to our powerful potential that can guide us to hitherto unknown experiences and emotions. How this happened for Sue Monk Kidd needs to be read rather than revealed here. But I cannot resist emphasizing, perhaps at the risk of repeating myself, her belief in stories. Her words tell this best: "I believe in stories," she writes. "The world has enough dogma. It's stories we need more of, stories that reverence the still, small voice that sings our life. As Anthony de Mello observed, 'The shortest distance between a human being and Truth is a story.' Jesus, himself, told stories about the most common things in the world: a lost sheep, a seed that falls on rocky ground, a woman who sweeps her house in search of a coin, a man whose son runs away from home. 'All personal theology,' de Mello instructs us, 'should begin with the words: Let me tell you a story.'"

Sue Monk Kidd's stories are just as simple as those mentioned above. She describes watching her two young children playing in the snow, laughing as they fall backward like "a toppled snowman." How they yell to her over and over to watch them, how she would exclaim her delight with assurances and shout out "grand superlatives" at what they were doing. How touched she is by her realization that their need for approval and admiration is cut deeply into their little souls. And how vitally important it is that she tell them that they are indeed wonderful.

Another story tells about the father of a six-year-old lying in a hospital bed in a deep coma. He comes to her day after day, bringing her flowers, sitting by her bed, stroking her hair, keeping up a quiet conversation about her dog, her brother, the weather, anything he thinks might interest her. Never tiring, hour after hour. Never losing hope.

Firstlight is a book about stories; specifically, stories taken from the author's own life. Stories of her experiences that have led to the many changes she has made in her life. She shares with us the stories that have touched her, affected her in a deep way. In reading them, I too am touched; I too am changed. I eagerly recommend this book to anyone who wishes to be on a similar journey.

by Duffie Bart
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women

One of my favorite books of all time is Sue Monk Kidd's "Secret Life of Bees." This collection of her early inspirational writings for Guideposts and other publications is a delight. She was well known in those circles for years before her blockbuster book. As she says, she always had a 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. This is very thought provoking reading, the type that you will want to savor and mull over for awhile.

In a word, this book is inspirational. The tone is evident even in the book's packaging: its beach-sunrise jacket photo and its airy page design. If you need an emotional lift --- or know someone who does --- FIRSTLIGHT will provide it.

Over her writing career of nearly 30 years, Sue Monk Kidd has endeared herself to two audiences. First, to readers of Guideposts magazine and devotionals, for which she wrote very concrete, first-person, anecdotal narratives. A sample: "Late one winter night it snows in South Carolina. When the sun comes up, a dazzling white quilt lays across our small backyard.

" 'Oh-h-h, Mommy.' In the bedroom both children cling to the windowsill speechless. It is their first snow..."

In memoirs published from 1988 to 1997, her spiritual journey reflected a more contemplative outlook and eventually a feminist theology that endeared a different readership. Then her fiction (THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES and THE MERMAID CHAIR) turned her and her unorthodox characters into conversational centerpieces all around town, coast to coast.

Now here's the trick. Can this new collection of "early writings" bridge her two audiences? I say yes, assuming a reader is not scouring for theological tenets but for feel-good inspiration that encourages faith in a slightly vague Divine.

Many of the untitled selections within the book's 13 chapters are from Guideposts publications, anecdotes about childhood, motherhood, marriage and Sue's early nursing career. But it seems that most of the chapter topics (with titles such as "Awareness," "Solitude," "Simplicity of Spirit" and "Gracious Space") are grounded in essays that are more reflective than anecdotal. A sample from the first chapter, titled "The Crucible of Story": "The inner story creates identity, transforming our vision of who we are. Creating story is an act of self-knowing...Knowing who I am hinges on remembering who I have been in the past and embracing the hope of who I may be in the future."

It's a different kind of writing --- less personal, less concrete. But the complementary styles work well together, the anecdotes illustrating the reflective points.

In the introduction, Sue explains how she warmed up to the idea of compiling these writings that are foundational to her spiritual and literary journey. At first she was hesitant: "I wanted to be read and known for who I am now." But eventually: "Opening myself to the creation of this book, so aptly titled FIRSTLIGHT, became an unexpected act of reclamation...a bridge...a gift of reunion."

My favorite piece in the book is a short "Availability" anecdote, recounting a visit to a homeless shelter and Sue's conversation with James, a resident who eagerly shows her his "book" --- a scrapbook featuring worthless incidentals (a restaurant napkin, a calendar, a few autographs) that "represented James's list of blessings. Blessings he read and reread."

Just as you, or I, might read and reread Sue Monk Kidd's FIRSTLIGHT.

--- Reviewed by Evelyn Bence

Stories and essays filling FIRSTLIGHT with inspiration come from the author's early writings for Guideposts and other publications and are centered around spiritual insights and 'firsts', following her early years as a spiritual thinker. Anyone with an interest in the life and thought of Sue Monk Kidd in particular will find FIRSTLIGHT filled with both autobiographical insights and spiritual inspiration, making it a pick both for religious collections and for the general-interest public lending library.