When the Heart Waits: Spiritual Direction for Life's Sacred Questions

Back in the autumn I had awakened to a growing darkness and cacophony, as if something in the depths were crying out. A whole chorus of voices. Orphaned voices. They seemed to speak for all the unlived parts of me, and they came with a force and dazzle that I couldn't contain. They seemed to explode the boundaries of my existence. I know now that they were the clamor of a new self struggling to be born.

That's the sacred intent of life, of God--to move us continuously toward growth, toward recovering all that is lost and orphaned within us and restoring the divine image imprinted on our soul.

I don't hold to the idea that God causes suffering and crisis. I just know that those things come along and God uses them. We think life should be a nice, clean ascending line. But inevitably something wanders onto the scene and creates havoc with the nice way we've arranged life to fall in place.

If you can’t be still and wait, you can’t become what God created you to be.

I said to my soul, be still, and wait. . . . So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing. T. S. ELIOT

To know exactly where you’re headed may be the best way to go astray. Not all who loiter are lost.

To constantly relive the past is to miss out on the present.