Finally found out how to get past the firewalls and blog ...

It seems I'm not the only one to find things not going quite as I had hoped this season - though I've not had anything as drastic as a broken limb to cope with. But I found Henri Nouwen's book "The Inner Voice of Love" very helpful, even if it's not a comfortable kind of help. This morning I read

"For as long as you can remember, you have been a pleaser, depending on others to give you an identity. You need not look at that only in a negative way. You wanted to give your heart to others, and you did so quickly and easily. But now you are being asked to let go of all these self-made props and trust that God is enough for you. You must stop being a pleaser and reclaim your identity as a free self."

It's much along the same lines as the Advent reading for Monday, with the warning that we too easily fail to live as ourselves because we live in imitation of someone else. I've been thinking a good deal recently about the call to reality, when so much around me whispers fantasies. God's love is reality, and God calls us to live really. Imitating others, pleasing others, seeking others' patterns of success ... they all point me away from the reality we seem called to find in quiet, in being with God who is the ground of our reality. I don't seem to have got very far in "thinking a good deal", but I guess it's the kind of reality that comes to the patient. I just wish I were naturally patient ...