SPIRITUAL focus on books August 23, 2004 Issue

Not-so-hidden blessings

By Kim Shippey Senior Writer

Many readers of modern novels have delighted in Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees(Penguin Books, New York, 2002)—a coming-of-age story in which love triumphs over several aspects of the racial violence and unrest in the American South in the early 1960s. The book has been on The New York Times bestseller list for more than 75 weeks.

Not so many people are aware of Kidd's devotional books recounting facets of her spiritual journey through life. Drawing on her busy life as a minister's wife with two children, she shows how God's presence can be known through the ordinary—and not so ordinary—events of our lives. "Even the simplest happening," she writes, "can be full of holy sounds."

For example, in her introduction to her collection of essays, Love's Hidden Blessings (Servant Publications, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1990), Kidd tells how as a four-year-old she was awakened one windy night by a soft scratching on her window screen. It didn't occur to her to be afraid. She was struck only with curiosity.

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