I was reading Alice Walker’s The Same River Twice and was provoked again to think. She talks about her circumstances and processes she moved through while filming The Color Purple. I think it is a courageous book. I think she needed to say aloud what she said. I am still processing what I’ve read, but it struck my heart. She is a very beautiful lady. The way she see and treats others, the grace she shows to people she creates in her books and those she faced, lived, and moved with were healing and challenging to me. There is a depth and richness to the relationships she writes out and the ones she describes having.

     I think I needed to hear from someone I respect that even heroes need a space to fail, a space to be silent, a space to grow, and a space to celebrate victories. Alice Walker conciously or unconciously does just that.  I am as I stated still processing, but one of the many things she said that is rolling around in my grey matter is:

          “My faith was battered by that betrayal. And yet, as with a lover, what can one really absolutely trust? Only that or she will be themselves… Trusting only that it will be however it is, and accepting that some parts of it may hurt.”

Ms. Walker is speaking about her personal faith (her personal religion) and regardless of the object of that faith I agree with the wisdom she expresses. It reminds me of L’Engle’s quote:

     When I began working on my latest project for a class on writing that I am taking, I wanted to explore that truth. I wanted to explore something I can’t quite put into conversation. I kept hoping to find it in writing fiction. Some times that is how I find words for truths I am puzzling out. We’ll see. For now, in the middle of circumstances of crisis, I am trying to listen to a woman who fought prejudice, false accusations, hurtful unfair criticism, her mother’s prolonged illness, and Lyme Disease while producing art that led to a Pulitzer Prize and an acclaimed film. She created in the midst of pain. Sounds a great deal like birth that leads to life.