Throughout the years, we would see one another at various writers’ conferences, catching up on our lives and work. I received an invitation from her to accompany her to Crete and Greece on a Goddess search with a group of women. I longed to go, but could not afford the trip.

When HarperSanFrancisco published her non-fiction book, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, outside of the traditional patriarchy of Christianity, I was delighted at her accomplishment.

When The Secret Life of Bees was published by Viking, the joy of reading her extremely accomplished fiction overwhelmed me and much of the nation, as was evident by the public’s response to it. It remained on the New York Times bestseller list for over two years and sold over four million copies.

When a book signing brought Sue to Jubilee in Asheville, I was able to say hello and give her a hug in the crush of well-wishers. Her success had not diminished or changed the real, personable, cheerful woman with whom I was acquainted. The Mermaid Chair followed Bees, and soon became a Lifetime television movie. Sue and her daughter were given bit parts in the production. At the conclusion of filming, Sue was presented with a prop—the mermaid’s chair used in the movie.

The Sophia gathering was awe-inspiring. I want to share Sue’s thoughts on creativity, artistry, and our connection to the Devine Matrix. What follows is a summation of these ideas from her presentations.

Everyone has a creative instinct. It can be wounded or denied, but it is within, waiting to be rediscovered. Reconnect with this artistic side by giving yourself time to browse, to play, to be in nature, and to be quiet and at peace. Give yourself time to create. Don’t worry over language or excellence in writing: allow the creative side to flow, and save excellence for the editing. Polish, rewrite, and hone the beauty of language once the story is down on paper. Don’t allow the mundane in your efforts—take a chance on the side of audacity.

"Novels are small astonishments!" Sue quotes John Gardner, a favorite author, when she says truth is native to your soul—you have to keep discovering it and bringing it to life. It is our "responsibility" to find what fascinates us and to act upon it. "The angel doesn’t bring its gift to the ready, but to the passionate."

Writing is Sue’s way to connect to the artistic unconscious. We are connected to the dark feminine, or Feminine Matrix, through our roots. The Universal Realm of the Collective Unconsciousness is the source of all archetypes of all stories. The feminine possesses all of the mysteries of conception, gestation, birth, life, death—and is in everyone. Sue sees the Black Madonna as representative of the dark fertile earth mother at the center of creation—the mother of madness and creativity. We need to tap this madness, which is mystery and magic. To be able to do this, we need time for contemplation.

The Seven Storey Mountain, by Thomas Merton, precipitated Sue’s search for the "Contemplative Life." She also spent eight years with a Jungian psychiatrist, which opened her eyes to interpreting symbols as well as understanding her own pacification of her creativity due to a disconnection with the deep feminine within. Analyzing her dreams and creating collages opened her consciousness to psychic revelation. Writing was her method of bringing wholeness to life, comforting her wounds, and giving voice to what has been silenced. When she was able to reach her own vulnerability and express it on paper, it created an intimacy with the reader, like a sacrament offered and received.

During her search for the feminine divine, Sue and her fellow women travelers’ found themselves at a convent in Crete where she spied a Black Madonna at the top of a massive myrtle tree. When she asked why it was there, the nun explained that the icon kept "escaping" from the church and returning to the tree. The nuns decided to leave it where it seemed to want to be. When postulants prayed beneath the Madonna for their heart’s deepest desire, their wishes were granted. That was why there were so many gifts below the tree.

Sue and her American friends were skeptical, but suddenly Sue felt a strong sense of "what if" that made her shelve her cynicism and go to the base of the tree to pray for a novel that she would write that many people would read.

In 1997, she began The Secret Life of Bees. It took her three-and-a-half years to write the first half of the book. When her agent submitted that to a publisher, it was accepted. Viking gave her nine months to finish the novel. In September of 2000, standing in line at the UPS to send off her competed manuscript, Sue suddenly remembered the wish beneath the myrtle tree and knew her dream was manifesting. She had planned another trip to Greece with friends to take place in six weeks, and standing in line she knew she must change the itinerary to include a stop at the convent in Crete to take her thanks for her success to the Black Madonna. Her friends were up for the change of plans, and seven years from the day that she had sent forth her prayer, Sue was back at the myrtle, pouring South Carolina honey at its base as a thank you for The Secret Life of Bees. Sue says, "Mystery is everywhere. We don’t have to understand it." Accept the grace, and give thanks.

Before writing The Secret Life of Bees, Sue had created a collage using her Jungian symbols to formulate a visual image of her characters and the plot of the story. She began her writing with a vision of the character of Jessie on a bed, with bees coming out of the walls above her. Sue formatted character profiles and created a framework based on Aristotle’s Incline and Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Even with a set structure, mystery was still a part of the process. At the three-quarter mark, Sue realized what she was writing did not fit with her intended ending. She kept following the mystic path of what was flowing. Then, as she neared the end of the novel, one of the characters in the story, August, appeared to Sue in a dream. August wagged her finger in Sue’s face and said, "You’re ending sucks! Lily needs to stay with her mothers!" That was a 180 degree turn from Sue’s intended finale, but she realized it was the right ending, and she had been writing subconsciously to that finale.

Later, when Sue was writing The Mermaid Chair, she again followed her artistic fancy and trusted there was a reason why Jessie’s mother cut off her finger off, even though it was not a planned part of her plot. She had learned to go deep within the well and trust what came. As Hildegard of Bingen said in one of her most famous quotes, "I am a feather on the breath of God." Sue allows that divine breath to blow through her.

Traveling with Pomegranates, Sue’s next work, is in collaboration with her daughter who is also a writer. It is a non-fiction account of how their spiritual paths have intertwined, told in alternating chapters. It includes their own trip to Greece, and, Sue says with a wink, how to be an aging woman today. I can’t wait!