when the heart waits

Last week, I read a lovely book called "When the Heart Waits: Spiritual Direction for Life's Sacred Questions" by Sue Monk Kidd. The subtitle particularly got me. I appreciated her simplicity and encouragement for us to simply allow life to grow and transform us, to let the questions sink in deeply, and to not assume what the transformation will look like. These were some of the little poems or quotations that headed off her chapters. 

Midway this way of life we're bound upon, 

I woke to find myself in a dark wood,

Where the right road was wholly lost and gone...

It is so bitter it goes nigh to death.

-Dante 

Waiting patiently in expectation is the foundation of the spiritual life.

- Simone Weil 

There is nothing instant or automatic in spiritual development. 

- Alan Jones

I am caterpillar. The leaves I eat taste bitter. But dimply I sense a great change coming. What I offer you humans is my willingness to dissolve and transform. I do that without knowing what the end-result will be. 

- Joanna Macy

Nothing in all creation is so like God as stillness.

- Meister Eckhart

I said to my soul, be still and let the dark come upon you

Which shall be the darkness of God. 

- T. S. Eliot 

Lord, 

I will tear the heart of my soul in two

And you must lay therein. 

You must lay yourself 

In the wounds of my soul. 

- Mechtild of Magdeburg