walking in the night...

Sometimes I've feel disorientated.

Sometimes, I feel completly overwhelmed and unable to take another step.

Sometimes I've feel alone, and paralysed. My body heavy as clay in the still air.

At these times I am forced to be at rest. I am forced to wait. Forced to recognise my frailty and weakness. Forced to listen to the smallest whispers of my soul.

Sometimes, it feels that we are left with only a candle of faith kept alight by the breath of hope to guide us.

Walking in the depth of a valley from which we can see nothing beyond the height of the mountains surrounding us. And in this place God meets us as we are. His lost children. Naked and shivering as winter trees in a storm.

"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

I will fear no evil: For thou art with me;

Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me."

I am often comforted by this extract from St. Therese of Lisieux in her book "Story of a Soul"

"The very fact that, left to myself, I could do nothing, made my task seem all the more simple; there was only one thing for me to do, unite myself more and more to God, knowing that He would give all the rest in addition.

This was no vain hope; no matter how often I have to feed the souls of my Sister, my hand is always full.
I assure you that had I acted in any other way, had I relied upon my own resources, I should have had to lay down my arms at once."

As our steps quicken through this valley we are forced to through off all that encumbers. Our fears, our ideas, our attachments to things.

We are forced to walk a straight and narrow road because we are walking in the darkness. Just as we are at pains to take care not to stumble in the middle of the night.
I'm holding on, clinging on to Jesus's hand. To the strands of love and peace and joy that fray from the hem of his robes.

Jesus is the light of the world and the holy spirit came upon the apostles only once He had assended. It seemed to them that he had gone, but he was there more than ever before.
He was inside them.