Unlawful Intruders of the Soul

“When our souls are restless, when we are driven by thousands of different and often conflicting stimuli, when we are always “over there” between people, ideas and worries of this world, how can we possibly create the room and space where someone else can enter freely without feeling himself an unlawful intruder?”

Henri Nouwen Wounded Healer, p 90

Father, it's been one of those days. A thousand different and often conflicting stimuli dragged me out of my high expectations for concentrated order and left me in a crowded space where my friends could certainly have felt to be unlawful intruders. I had so hoped to establish a degree of peace to begin my work week. It helps me to be more welcoming.

But the day has been what the day was, and I settle now into my pre-sleep meditations seeking Your Spirit to calm the ideas and worries of this world, and to find my rest in You, and to let this day go like a balloon into the vast vanilla sky of Your perfect eternity. I let it go. And watch it become smaller and smaller until it's completely gone.

And I beg of You to work in me the renovations that will create the space and room You need in me to accomplish the love You've call me to do.

I'm glad You don't sleep.

I'm glad You grant sleep to those You love,

Because I need Your love

And I freely fall into Your sleep tonight.

New Year Happy

I love how these first days of this new year have invited simple joys to heal and fill me.

Harvest's first Christmas. Time to sleep and rest and be, over the holidays. Abby's songs, so spontaneous and true and beautiful that certainly angels have stopped to listen. Zachary's happy clapping when I come in the door, every time. Afternoons that slip into long evenings in the family room, candles and fireplace flickering their nurture and strength into my soul. The smell of a small child freshly awake. Finding exactly what I went for at the gently used clothing store. A lifeguard that sees I've come in late and lets me have a few extra laps in the pool all by myself. Eating well again and staying on track and feeling good. A prime parking spot. An unexpected book. An unexpected kiss. Sunshine.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm looking too large to find reasons to be glad. Certainly, big, hairy, audacious goals are needful for accomplishing the big, hairy, audacious things. And life would be over simplified without them. Mundane even, really. I don't want to skim my life. Like everyone else on the planet, I want my life to have made a difference in something bigger than myself. I need the motivation of gladness in succeeding in what's important.

And I can't ignore that big, hairy, audacious troubles trouble me, too often for my liking. Not to face them, lead through them, stand against them, choose righteousness in the midst of them would be to acquiesce to their evil. I choose not to lay down and be flattened. And this can be exhausting.

But in the fabric of that, there's a collective of simple joy that would be tragically un-engaged if I'm not careful. There's an energy for my bigger living and the greater battles of my life, gleaned from the collaboration of the small things; there's healing, even from the harsh and painful and obvious, in the gentle and pleasurable and subtle.

So I am welcoming these simple joys to begin the celebration that is this new year happy.