Susan Cobb – Rediscovering our spiritual ideal

Susan Cobb is a new author!  Her memoir, Virgin Territory – How I Found My Inner Guadalupe, was recently published in the United States and Mexico – where she now lives.  Fresh from the experience of writing the book, Susan now finds herself in the delicious space of connecting with readers and fellow seekers.

We asked Susan to share some of her joys and inspiration related to the good works and difference she is making in the world:

1.  What do you do?

Six months ago I would have answered, “I’m writing a book.” Six hours ago, I would have said, “I’m marketing a book – and thinking about the next one.” This morning I had breakfast with a friend, and we had one of those mutually inspirational exchanges where we both took notes and went away mulling over what the other said. So here’s my new answer: “I educate and enable by publishing and being present.”

I use the word educate as “to lead forth, to make fit for a calling,” and the word publish as “to make [something] known by openly declaring its character or status.”

2.  Why do you do it?

It’s what I’ve always done. It just looked like I had different jobs while I was doing it. Looking back, educating and enabling was what I was about when I taught school, wrote grant applications, helped run a landscape nursery, acted as a real estate agent, counseled inmates as a jail chaplain, set up a Christian Science healing practice, and traveled nationally and internationally as an inspirational speaker. It’s not my second nature, it’s my first nature to look for and lead forth the best in others and openly declare their true character and status.

I lost sight of the best in me for a while. That was when my husband and I sold everything we owned in the States and moved to Mexico. For a while I licked what I perceived to be grave emotional and psychic wounds, stuck my lower lip out and glowered northward. Thank heaven there are others who educate and enable. They not only openly declared the character and status of the real me, they were there for me. My memoir, Virgin Territory: How I Found My Inner Guadalupe is largely the story of my own education, re-discovering and leading forth a spiritual ideal I thought I’d lost.

I use The Virgin of Guadalupe as a metaphor for a number of reasons. First of all, she’s there. In fact her image is everywhere in Mexico. Being present, when someone needs you, whether you know what to do or not, is first and foremost the most important thing. It can be your actual physical presence, but it can also be on the phone or through correspondence. It’s just important for the person in need to know you’re available and thinking of them.

Second, “La Lupita” bears a striking resemblance to the description found in Revelation 12, of “a woman clothed in the sun,” described by Mary Baker Eddy in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures as “the spiritual ideal.” I began taking a fresh look at those passages so familiar to me, which had frankly seemed far removed from any practical daily application. But the qualities ascribed to the Virgin of Guadalupe by my Mexican neighbors put me to thinking that it sure couldn’t hurt if I started incorporating a few of those “virgin” qualities into my own character! As I did that I began to recognize that I had always had those qualities – patience, forgiveness, endurance, strength, innocence and so many more.

Third, the Virgin of Guadalupe is distinctly feminine, and I think the world could use a more feminine spiritual ideal. More on that below.

3.  How does “what you do” & your approach to life nourish you?

I was raised with Mary Baker Eddy’s “Children’s Prayer,” which begins “Father-Mother God, loving me,” so the concept of God as having a “mother” side, was never foreign to me, but it always seemed to be the model of a primarily Father God with a sweet soft side. I do realize that in many cases, the “sweet soft side” of parenting can just as often come from the male figure as from the feminine, but we’re talking nourishment here, aren’t we? That image of God is not one I was taught in Sunday school.

However my exploration into an essential identity, the “ideal” me that I sincerely trust will be sticking around for eternity, being modeled on an exclusively feminine model has been transformational. No more does it even occur to me to think of “woman” as a few ticks away from the “norm” brought to thought by that so-called generic term “man.” Oh, how I wish there was another term!

But Mrs. Eddy writes, “The woman in the Apocalypse symbolizes generic man…” Well I love symbols. Finding visible symbols for what is physically invisible feeds my soul. So I’m always looking around for stand-ins for the “spiritual ideal.” That’s what I did in Virgin Territory, drawing on feminine icons found in popular Mexican culture, and then riffing from them to the “virgin” qualities they represent. There is, of course, the Virgin of Guadalupe and all she stands for, but there is also La Abuelita (a gray-haired granny brand of chocolate used for making cocoa.  Say no more, right? We’re talking comfort here.) There is also La Michoacana (symbol of omnipresent ice cream of infinite variety), Catrina (skeletal fashion diva who parties in the graveyard and laughs at death), and Coatlicue (a formidable nurturer of over four hundred children who wears a skirt made of snakes).  Keeping my eye out for icons like these is as satisfying as a bag of Cheetos on a road trip – and a lot more nourishing.

4.  In what ways do others find what you do nourishing?

Well, first of all, my Mexican friend Lupita (short for Guadalupe) tells me that for the first time in her life she’s happy with her name. That’s pretty nourishing, isn’t it? Think of it, to be comfortable, at last, with what you are called. Wouldn’t that make you ready to respond to your calling?

Struggling with what we’re called seems to be a common thread through much of the correspondence I’ve received in regard to Virgin Territory. Most writers say something to the effect that they’re grateful that I’ve put into words what they’ve felt for a long time, that they can “identify” with me. For example, many have struggled with a church/culture to which they’ve belonged. I wrote Virgin Territory from the perspective of someone long conversant with Christian Science, so I hear a lot from people who have been called that. But I also hear from people who were raised Catholic or Southern Baptist. I’ve had long conversations with a former Mormon and a former Lutheran. I’ve heard very little anger expressed. Most look at their former denomination more as a window than the light itself.

“Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater,” counseled a “recovered Catholic,” to a group having a conversation inspired by Virgin Territory. Around that table I found each diner reluctant to claim affiliation with any denomination, and hesitant to use, when referring to their own spiritual ideal or identity, language that might smack of overt Christianity or New Age vernacular.  Just because words were inadequate, does that mean that these people could not have cared less for “things of the spirit?” No, on the contrary, I think they care very deeply. Using the term “inner Guadalupe” provides, for now, a tongue-in-cheek way of referring to that that is most deep and precious, the authentic core of each individual’s spiritual being that is difficult to define in human terms. It allows people to talk.

5.  What would you say is your biggest source of inspiration?

I like hearing people’s stories. Virgin Territory is the kind of book that inspires people to share with me not only accounts of life-changing events, but stories that illustrate the life-shaping attitudes that have made them who they are today. That’s very inspirational.

6. Where can we learn more?

My website is www.susanjcobb.com. Contact me there about getting a group discount for your book club. Download the discussion guide and start a conversation with each other. Let’s educate (lead forth) the best in each other, and publish (declare openly) the true nature and character of what we really are.

My book, Virgin Territory, is available in an electronic format from amazon.com and in paperback on my site.