listening

Just got back from a work weekend in Ocean Grove, NJ.

My head is spinning with TO-DOs and questions.

Emails. Upcoming deadlines. Catching up with family. Friends to pray for. Africa. Wanting to go back to school. Cleaning up the apartment. Need 5 years for school at least. What about children? When? How?

A gentle reminder from Henri:

"...it is clear that we are usually surrounded by so much outer noise that it is hard to truly hear our God when he is speaking to us. We have often become deaf, unable to know when God calls us and unable to understand in which direction he calls us. Thus our lives have become absurd. In the word absurd we find the Latin word surdus which means "deaf". A spiritual life requres discipline because we need to learn to listen to God who constantly speaks but whom we seldom hear.

When we learn to listen, our lives become obedient lives. The word obedient comes from the Latin word audire which means "listening". A spiritual discpline is necessary in order to move slowly from an absurd life to an obedient life, from a life filled with noisy worries to a life in which there is some free inner space where can listen to God and follow..."

~Henri Nouwen