Bah! It’s useless… woke up 1.5 hrs ago and can’t get back to sleep! It’s 1:10a.m. And if I stay awake any longer I know I’m going to get hungry. I always do. *mock sigh* :P
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Was reflecting earlier and marvelling again at how much Nouwen’s writing seems to speak to me… to address the precise areas in me that I had recently come to identify as ‘needing refining’. It’s quite uncanny, really, how much his writing seems to say no more and no less than what I need to know at this point. There’s enough to trigger deeper thought and reflection, but his words are simple and sparse enough to create a space within me for me to explore on my own.
It occurs to me that in the current setting, God is using Nouwen’s writing to sow precious seeds in the soil of my heart. But the only reason they are being received so gratefully and taking such deep effects is because the soil of my heart had been toiled and broken.
I know for certain that these same books that I am now reading would have been no more than ‘interesting’ to me before. The wisdom contained in the books are the same. But it would have fallen on hard, unyielding ground, and it would not have taken root in my heart or be able to grow.
I must take care to keep the soil in my heart receptive with prayer and reflection. I must keep working on converting barren loneliness into a fertile solitude of the heart – the solitude that allows me to extend true hospitality to those who enter my solitude and share theirs with me.
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I am the same ‘me’. And yet I am not. Something has changed, and is still changing… but the change may be akin to the unfurling of the petals of a rose; nothing essential is different, but there is a movement from potentiality to actuality.
I can’t help musing a little about this change, because I feel like I’m getting reacquainted with myself. I think I’m learning to befriend my fearful self, and in return, she is beginning to show me the treasures that she has. It seems the more I befriend her, the more I am able to see myself honestly without fear or hatred. It seems like it may have been my fearful self all along that holds the key I need to transform my own flaws and brokenness into inspiration and healing power.
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1:47a.m. *thinks* Ok. Think will go eat a banana or drink a warm cup of milo. Then I must sleep. Got a hot breakfast date with a serious cutie in the morning, and the rest of the day to catch up with Yinwei. I don’t wish to fall asleep ‘on’ her! :P
Journey of the Heart 