Spiritual Direction: Wisdom for the Long Walk of Faith

by Henri J.M. Nouwen

Through prayer we awaken ourselves to God within us. With practice, we allow God to enter into our heartbeat and our breathing, into our thoughts and emotions, into our hearing, seeing, touching, and tasting, and into every membrane of our body. It is by being awake to God in us that we can increasingly see God in the world around us.

This is very hard to do since we are so fearful and insecure. We keep hiding ourselves from God and from others. We tend to present to God and to others only those parts of ourselves with which we feel relatively comfortable and which we think will evoke a positive response. Thus our prayer life becomes very selective and narrow. It is clear that the discipline of the Heart calls for some direction to allow us to overcome fears, to deepen our faith and realize more of who God is for us. Typical questions for a spiritual director to ask are: How is your prayer life? How are you making space in your life for God to speak?