Blog Your Blessings Sunday

by Hopeful Spirit on Sunday, February 25, 2007

Today I am thank­ful for the many tal­ented, cre­ative peo­ple who inspire me. One of them is Alice Walker, author of one of my all-time favorite books, “The Color Purple.”

There is a very inter­est­ing inter­view with Ms. Walker at beliefnet. She talks about her new book, “We Are the Ones We Have Been Wait­ing For: Inner Light in a Time of Dark­ness,” which is def­i­nitely going to be the next book I read.

What really intrigued me about this inter­view is her phi­los­o­phy about the Divine Cre­ator. “Alice Walker has always known God. But she prefers terms like ‘God­ness’ [I like this term!] and ‘Mama’ to describe the divine—for her, it is every­where, from the Japan­ese maples out­side her win­dow to the slow yoga she practices.”

About “The Color Pur­ple,” she says, it is “about the­ol­ogy. Many peo­ple assume that it’s about just about incest, wife abuse, spouse-beating; all of that is in there, but you will notice that the jour­ney that Celie is mak­ing is toward her self-realization as a part of the entire God­ness. Speak­ing of God as every­thing there is, was, ever will be.”

Asked what she sees when she closes, her eyes and tunes into God, she responds: “I don’t close my eyes. Why would I close my eyes? It’s every­where. I mean it just is. What is this if it’s not God?”

The inter­viewer also asked her if she feels that she has had a sense of God in that fash­ion her whole life. About that, she says:

Yes. I do. In fact, when I was 13, I stopped going to church because I felt like they had taken this huge, amaz­ing, incred­i­ble God­ness and whit­tled it down to this tiny lit­tle thing that they stuck in the church every Sun­day when peo­ple were too tired really to lis­ten, and fell asleep because they were exhausted from still being slaves, basically.

And I wanted, and I insisted, even at that age, on going out into nature and truly feel­ing what is there, what–you know, we’re not–you know, the rea­son we are not alone is that–because earth is with us. We are her beings. It’s not because there’s some­body in the sky who’s watch­ing us, you know?

On the mat­ter of thank­ful­ness, she responds to the ques­tion of whether she has prayers that she says on a reg­u­lar basis this way:

Thank you” is the best prayer that any­one could say. I say that one a lot. Thank you expresses extreme grat­i­tude, humil­ity, under­stand­ing. Peo­ple pray and pray–and that’s fine. But, for me, “Thank you” just basi­cally says it all.

Indeed it does.

In every­thing … give thanks. Amen and amen!

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{ 5 comments }

1 CyberCelt February 25, 2007 at 5:22 pm

Great post. I will look for her new book as well.

I, too, realized at an early age that church is just for the people who do not know how to worship on their own. Of course, being a Catholic probably explains the lapse… LOL

Have a great week.

2 MsDemmie February 25, 2007 at 5:23 pm

Thought provoking post – I have some reading to do.

“Yes. I do. In fact, when I was 13, I stopped going to church because I felt like they had taken this huge, amazing, incredible Godness and whittled it down to this tiny little thing that they stuck in the church every Sunday” – resonates loudly with me.

Happy BYB Sunday

3 Blue Panther February 25, 2007 at 9:43 pm

Great post and I feel, too,that people who inspire us are a great blessing and so is saying Thank you a great prayer.

4 Viola February 26, 2007 at 7:04 am

Thank you for adding me to your blogroll. I just did the same.

My search for spiritual truth is much like yours.

5 stev February 26, 2007 at 7:06 am

‘thank you’ really is powerful :)

now comparing it with ‘i love you’… hmmm…

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