conversations in the story we find ourselves in

Solitude is not a private therapeutic place, it is a place of encounter. -Henri Nouwen

....if I was going to last, I actually needed to follow Jesus's words about loving others as myself, which required me to first be a friend to myself. 3 stages of love (from St. Bernard of Clairvaux) 1. Love God for our own sake, for what God can do for us. 2. We love God for God's own sake, for who God is in God's own character and glory and beauty. 3. We love ourselves for God's sake. We join with God in seeing ourselves in a gracious and compassionate light. Through the practice of petition, we learn to stand with God and see yourself as needy, weak, limited, imperfect, edgy, stressed, driven, frightened, or troubled. But you don't criticize, condemn, chide, or reject yourself. Rather, you join God in God's desire for your own expansion and well-being. You join God in wanting the best for you, and in that light you make your request for your friend, yourself.

Life isn't supposed to be easy, and struggle can lead to growth. [...] There are days, of course, when we wish there could be some other system. We wish there could be a way of developing patience without delay, courage without danger, forgiveness without offense, generosity without need, skill without discipline, endurance without fatigue, persistence without obstacles, strength without resistance, virtue without temptation, and strong love without hard-to-love people. But it turns out there is no other way. [...] If the challenges were to get too great for our taste, we would roll over and die--quickly through suicide or more gradually through addiction, despair, capitulation, or escape. We could refuse to develop the virtues that life's challenges evoke from us and instead choose vice as our coping strategy.

Most of the anxiety we face can be reduce to the fear that life might bring us more than we can handle. Maybe we'll fail, or if not fail, at least embarrass ourselves on the way to a second-best success. Maybe things we can't control will sneak in and control us. And maybe, as a result, our lives will not have a happy ending.

Immature petition tries to convince God to remake the world in our image for our convenience and ease, but mature petition asks God to remake us in God's own image, so that we can expand our capacity to respond to the world as it is.

"You're only as sick as your secrets." -from the world of recovery from addiction

Novelist and essayist C.S. Lewis used to ask, "What is the most significant conversation you have every day?" People would respond piously, "Your conversation with God, of course." "No." Lewis would reply. "It's the conversation you have with yourself before you speak to God, because in that conversation with yourself, you decide whether you are going to be honest and authentic with God, or whether you are going to meet God with a false face, a mask, an act, a pretense."

Here I am. Here you are. Here we are together. Who are you? Who am I? Who are we together?