Do You Hide Like Me?

Will I embrace this season?

Will I accept this time where unstructured time is more abundant and money is less?

Will I choose to come into a place of solitude?

As soon as we are alone, without people to talk with, books to read, TV to watch, or phone calls to make (or social networking sites to browse), an inner chaos opens up in us.  This chaos can be so disturbing and so confusing that we can hardly wait to get busy again.

Will I listen?

The discipline of the heart makes us stand in the presence of God with all we have and are: our fears and anxieties, our guilt and shame, our sexual fantasies, our greed and anger, our joys, successes, aspirations and hopes, our reflections, dreams, and mental wandering, and most of all our people, family, friends, and enemies, in short, all that makes us who we are.  With all this we have to listen to God's voice and allow God to speak to us in every corner of our being.  This is very hard since we are so fearful and insecure that we keep hiding ourselves from God.

These words from Henri Nouwen have been bouncing around in my head all week.  I am somehow trying to ignore the fact that I am trying to get so busy so fast, applying for jobs right and left.  I don't like not having full time work and a full time paycheck.  I half acknowledge that I am hiding from God even though I know better.

Words come: I love you.

Eleven months of "beloved" and I am still hiding.