In moving (a little over two years ago) and packing up thirty-plus years of living, libraries (home and office) were thinned. And what remains (quite a few, still gracing parts of seven bookcases in various rooms here), were books I wasn’t ready to release yet; books that made a difference to my evolving and or reference resources.
I know; crazy when we have the internet at our fingertips. Yet, there’s something with owning these physical books; some, many, first editions and several out of print now, that feels grounding.
As I started compiling words I’ve written in blogs and letters, and from resources I’ve collected for my work-in-progress book project, I started creating a References & Resources Library List of resources on all of my bookshelves. Of course, it, too, has become a work-in-progress project that will become an Additional Resources section in that book project. I’m enjoying this revisiting of where I’ve been.
These are books added today (so far): Art is a Spiritual Path by Pat B. Allen; If Life is a Game, These are the Rules by Cherie Carter-Scott, Ph.D.; and The Dance of the Dissident Daughter by Sue Monk Kidd. That one, written in 1996, wow! Timing coincided with a personal awakening and started what would become my side venture, known as WonderSpirit Resources. A sample of awakening from Sue Monk Kidd:
I was listening to National Public Radio the other day when someone asked the question: “Once you wake up, can you wake up any more?”
Yes, I thought. In a way my whole life has been about waking up and then waking up some more.
This book is about waking up some more.
In these pages I’ve tried to tell you about the deep and immense journey a woman makes as she searches for and finds a feminine spirituality that affirms her life. It’s about the quest for the female soul, the missing Feminine Divine, and the wholeness women have lost within patriarchy. It’s also about the fear, anger, pain, questions, healing, transformation, bliss, power, and freedom that come with such journeys.
I never thought I would write this book. That’s because this journey is one I never imagined myself taking.
I was going along doing everything I “should” have been doing, and then, unexpectedly, I woke up. I collided with the patriarchy within my culture, my church, my faith tradition, my marriage, and also within myself. And this collision changed everything. I began to wake up to a whole new way of being a woman. I took what seemed to me then, and seems to me now, an immense journey.
It was true: There had been other awakenings in my life, but no waking experience had been as passionate and life altering as this one, nor had there been another where I felt more was at stake. The female soul is no small thing. Neither is a woman’s right to define the sacred from a woman’s perspective.
Still, the initial idea of telling my story in this book gave me pause. The hardest thing about writing is telling the truth. Maybe it’s the hardest thing about being a woman, too. I think of Nisa, an old African woman who was telling her story for the tape recorder of a writer. She said “Fix my voice on the machine so that my words come out clear. I am an old woman who has experienced many things and I have much to talk about. It will tell my talk…but don’t let the people I live with hear what I have to say.” I love Nisa for that. I know that feeling. But in the end, Nisa and I told our truth anyway. – Sue Monk Kidd, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter: A Woman’s Journey from Christian Tradition to the Sacred Feminine
For reference fame, in 1996, I had already spent ten years working for a innovative, empowering visionary in a law office, returned to school and completed a bachelor of science in religious studies (same classes as those studying for priesthood–only I was single, thirty, and female) and secondary education and had served several years in parish ministry work as a director of youth ministry, and was a few years into a corporate professional human resources career. My awakening and a Franklin-Covey management course “What Matters Most” happened within weeks of each other. Inspired timing, because both of those changed and influenced how I operated in my corporate role and compelled me to create something of my own out of all that was part of me and mattered. Some would refer to such energy and knowing as a calling or vocation. I said yes to a dance in response. Feeling gratitude and appreciation.
If you’d like a copy of the ‘as is’ References and Resources Library List, ask. Can’t hurt; might be interesting. For now, have an awesome day! Live your story as you want to lead it, frame it, fine tune it. Nothing is wasted. Everything gets used for good. – Anne Wondra, WonderSpirit
P.S. Resources for Guys
While my work has led me to be a resource for women, my cousin Jennifer L. W. Fink is a writer, author, and speaker on Building Boys. She’s a mom of four sons and sister to four brothers, and I love what she’s created and written and who she is. Our guys have a lot of challenges in finding themselves and being true to who they are in this world of more knowledge and much diversity and sensitivity. (Her books are in my library, too. Highly recommend.)