Traveling with Pomegranates - long book review - but interesting

"Traveling with Pomegranates", a book written by Sue Monk Kidd, and her daughter Ann Kidd Taylor.

The travels to Greece and Paris are spiritual journeys helping them find their life work, understand relationships, and know themselves.

Descriptive and thoughtful writing gives vivid glimpses of the Greek ruins, and goddesses, the culture, wines and food, and snapshots of the Greek people.  The story of Persephone and Demeter seem to fit this mother and daughter.

A trip to Paris searching for the Black Madonna’s is a brief excursion filled with the beauty of discovering another black virgin bearing a message for both mother and daughter.  The spiritual side of the journey is very interesting. (the wild magnolia)

The Mom faces aging, loosing a daughter to her grown up life, and wondering if her writing will be the same as she ages.  The daughter receives a rejection letter to a preferred college and it rocks her world.  She is searching for her real life calling.

Family relationships and flash backs to childhood days are candid.  My only worry with the book was the constant center of self doubt and second guessing everything.  From being able to converse with each other to finding the life path they should follow.

I do consider Traveling with Pomegranates worth the read.

Sue Monk Kidd does ask questions that are good awakeners to research. 

Recognizing and searching for the sacred is an honorable pursuit of life.

(the wild magnolia)

Maria Sibylla Merian (1642-1717), Pomegranates, ca. 1665

http://www.codart.nl/exhibitions/details/1778/

Quotes from the book:

“Is there an odyssey the female soul longs to approach at the age of fifty.”  Sue Monk Kidd

“Old Woman I meet you deep inside myself.

- May Sarton

There in the rootbed of fertility,

World without end, as the legend tells it.

Under the words you are my silence.”

~ May Sarton

"The old woman I shall become will be quiet different from the woman I am now.  Another I is beginning." 

 - Madame George Sand

The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and John The Baptist sketch by Leonardo DiVinci

(the Child is handing John the Baptist a pomegranate. i suppose it is implied for i do not see the child John.)

John Singer Sargent 1908

“Simone de Beauvoir was of the opinion that if, at menopause, a woman gives her “consent” to growing older, she is changed into a “different being,” one who is more herself, one who is complete.  I get to my feet and climb down the temple steps, picking my way through the cactus, wondering why we do not have ceremonies of consent.”  -Sue Monk Kidd

Mary was declared Theotokos, Mother of God. - In 431 AD the church officially proclaimed Mary Theotokos, “God- bearer,”more commonly referred to as “Mother of God,”at the Third Ecumenical Council in Ephesus.

They visited at convent Palianis in Crete  The Greek nun: “You ask her for the thing at the bottom of your heart, yes?  The Virgin will give it.  Then you give her something.”

(-Sue Monk Kidd)

Egyptian Art 5th Century AD

 Pomegranates - Diego Rivera

Boticelli " Madonna of the Pomegranate: 1437

Searching for the sacred is an honorable pursuit.  Learning to recognize our own inner guidance, intuition the voice we hear deep inside, is recognized more by some that others.

Some believe we are spoken to, by the living and dead, by God and other spirit(s), through our intuition.

I like to believe the Blessed Virgin is watching over us, is a woman's woman, blessing us and guiding all women.

- the wild magnolia