The creator of the blockbusters The Secret Life of Bees and The Mermaid Chair revisits her early days as a Christian spirituality writer in Firstlight.
It must be interesting for you to return to your early writings as a spiritual seeker after more than two decades have passed.
Someone said to me, "Do you still believe all that?" It's not about believing or disagreeing with what you believed at 30 years old; what 57-year-old would be the same now as they were then? It would be a sign of immaturity. I look at those early writings and I see my potential to grow, expand and to take things in. All the seeds are there that sprouted into who I am now.
How would you describe yourself spiritually today?
My own spirituality is an unfolding process. It's about an expansion of the heart and soul and mind, and coming into deeper relationship not only with the divine but with one's self.
What tradition do you see yourself belonging to?
I see myself in the Christian tradition, but I also call myself an orthodox eclectic. I explore a lot of different avenues toward the transcendent.
Such as?
From Buddhism, I took an understanding of what I call "deep being"—being at the core of oneself and how to dwell there. It taught me how to bring my heart, soul and mind into the present in an attentive way. Also, can we look at the divine through a feminine lens? Can we speak of God with feminine language, image and symbols? This is incredibly important to me.
Which writer influenced your fiction the most?
Carl Jung helped me more than anything as a fiction writer. He opened the mysteries of the human psyche: what we are about, our interior motivations, our conflicts. He helped me figure out how to write my characters.
What are you working on now?
I had thought when I finished The Mermaid Chair, I'd write a third novel. But in the midst of it my daughter, who is a very fine writer, asked me to coauthor a book with her about some trips we took together to sacred sites in Greece and in France. This book for Riverhead will be an exploration of how to move through feminine passages of life, a reflection on the sacred sites we visited together and the evolution of my own spirituality. It's also about the story of our mother/daughter relationship. This summer I'm knuckling down and working on it.
